REEL CRITICS:Scorsese brings ‘Departed’ characters to life

Martin Scorsese’s resume is as impressive as that of any active filmmaker. Some of his films are arguably among the most indelible in movie history and include such Oscar-nominated classics as “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “The Color of Money,” “Goodfellas,” “Gangs of New York” and “The Aviator.” Scorsese’s films have garnered Academy Awards for several actors, including Ellen Burstyn, Robert DeNiro, Paul Newman, Joe Pesci and Cate Blanchett.

Unfortunately, Scorsese has never won an Oscar for either Best Picture or Best Director despite several nominations, including five for the latter category alone. Scorsese has received more recognition overseas as he has won one Golden Globe for Best Director (“Gangs of New York”), a Palme d’Or (“Taxi Driver”) and an award for Best Director (“After Hours”) at the Cannes Film Festival.

Scorsese’s latest effort is “The Departed,” featuring an all-star cast, including Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin and Martin Sheen. A character-driven epic (149 minutes), “The Departed” is a remake of a Hong Kong action film (“Infernal Affairs”) and takes place in Boston. The story focuses on two Massachusetts State policemen working opposite sides of the law.

Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) is a south Boston native and recent police academy graduate who is handpicked to go deep undercover to infiltrate the Irish mafia and the inner circle of its ruthless kingpin Frank Costello (Nicholson). To establish credibility, Costigan is first sent to prison. His identity is so secret it is known only to the two heads of the undercover division, Capt. Oliver Queenan (Sheen) and Sgt. Dignam (Wahlberg).

Colin Sullivan (Damon) is another “Southie” working for the state police. A standout at the academy, Sullivan rises through the ranks quickly and is assigned to the elite Special Investigations Unit. Unbeknownst to his superiors, Sullivan is a “mole” working for Costello and he informs the gangster of every move being made against him.

Sullivan’s contacts soon make him aware that Queenan and Dignam have placed an undercover officer in Costello’s crew. At the same time, Costigan soon realizes Costello’s seemingly incredible luck is actually due to a “rat” in the Special Investigation Unit. Thus begins a deadly game of cat and mouse as Sullivan and Costigan try to discover each other’s identity before they themselves are found out. Along the way, they individually develop relationships with a beautiful police psychiatrist (Kristen Dalton), Sullivan as significant other and Costigan as troubled patient.

As he has done so often in the past, Scorsese commands outstanding performances from his ensemble cast. Playing his age (69), Nicholson’s Costello is bigger than life and remains a gangster strictly for sport. He is jaded, debauched and world-weary, but simply cannot walk away from the illegal empire he created.

DiCaprio’s Costigan is a study in controlled terror as he plays both ends against the middle knowing full well that he is equally in danger from Costello and the unknown mole in the department. Damon plays Sullivan as an extremely efficient bureaucrat capable of turning on the charm when needed. As events unfold, Sullivan is revealed to be a cunning and dangerous sociopath. This revelation takes place naturally and in such a way as to be completely believable.

Several of the supporting roles are worthy of mention. Alec Baldwin provides some of the funniest moments as twitchy police supervisor Ellerby. Drenched with sweat, smoking and cursing, Baldwin steals every scene in which he appears. Giving the best performance of his career is Mark Wahlberg as Dignam. The no-nonsense Dignam personifies “in-your-face” and easily manipulates the befuddled Costigan.

“The Departed” contains plot twists galore and the ending is virtually Shakespearean in the manner in which the characters reap what they have sown. The script was written by William Monahan (“Kingdom of Heaven”) and most importantly by Siu Fai Mak, the director and writer of the source material, “Infernal Affairs.”

“The Departed” will likely garner Academy Award nominations for several acting categories and undoubtedly another Best Director nod for Scorsese. This is not the type of film, however, usually recognized as Best Picture, even though it might be nominated. Even if Scorsese is overlooked again, his status as an American film icon is established. Scorsese may have to wait for the Academy to award him an Oscar for lifetime achievement, a recognition he has already earned even if he never directs another film

Be careful how you view ‘Jesus Camp’

It could be a “Studio 60 on Sunset Strip” skit: A Christian summer camp called Kids on Fire, held in Devil’s Lake. But it’s not.

Like the Coca Cola you can buy at the theater snack bar, it’s the real thing. Indie filmmakers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (“The Boys of Baraka”) have laid it bare — or at least tried to — in their provocative movie “Jesus Camp.”

Had another film not beaten them to it, Grady and Ewing might better have named it “Lost in Translation.”

Since its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last spring, where it garnered a special jury prize for outstanding achievement in documentary and its subjects reaped vicious criticism from former Talking Heads singer David Bryne, “Jesus Camp” has amused, confused and infuriated Christians and non-Christians alike.

Grady and Ewing have described their 86-minute documentary as a look “at a summer camp for Charismatic Evangelical Christians run by the captivating Pastor Becky Fischer.” But it’s both more and less than that.

Gleaned from some 260 hours of footage, according to Fischer, it’s been distilled utterly without denominational, doctrinal or theological context. Grady and Ewing, one Jewish the other a self-described lapsed Roman Catholic, still seem unaware that their subjects are not your garden-variety Charismatic Evangelicals but a subset of a subset of Christianity widely regarded as aberrant: the Word of Faith Movement.

What’s more, the film contrives an elaborately political lens as it follows Fischer and three of the camp’s most precocious children (12-year-old preacher Levi, 9-year-old evangelist Rachel and 10-year-old dancer-for-God Tory) at camp and beyond. It offers something to raise the hackles of everyone.

Egged on by Fischer, a large, imposing woman with short, spiky blond hair, the children chant for “righteous judges” with raised, closed fists. Tearfully they lament abortion. They weep and sob. Their teeth chatter. Some fall to the floor, flail and convulse.

With a life-size cardboard cutout before them as a prop, they pray for (not to, as much of the media have repeatedly and incomprehensively misconstrued) the president.

Fischer shouts and whispers like a revival preacher to an auditorium packed full of small kids. “The devil goes after the young,” she tells them, “which is why I’m trying to warn you.”

Harry Potter’s a warlock. An enemy of God. In Old Testament times, he’d have been put to death. Christians are not, she tells them, to make a hero out of him.

Her public prayers and those of children are peppered with unintelligible sounds as they speak simultaneously in tongues. To the consternation of traditional Pentecostals, Charismatics and many other Christians, Fischer seems oblivious or unconcerned with St. Paul’s instruction regarding the use of private prayer languages.

If no interpreter is present, the apostle instructed, keep your unintelligible prayers to yourself. And when there is an interpreter, offer such prayers one at a time and limit them to two or three speakers. God, Paul taught, is not the author of confusion but the author of harmony.

Asked if they would lay down their lives for Christ, the children cheer.

“This is war!” Fischer screams. “Are you part of it or not?” The rhetoric and images of warfare are prolific. At one point, a group of children wearing war paint and battle dress perform a roughly choreographed song and dance.

Less story than kaleidoscope, the scenes are interspersed with smooth commentary from Air America’s progressive Christian talk show host, Mike Papantonio. Alone, framed by the glass walls of his studio sound room, he speaks to his listeners as though his is the singular voice of reason crying in the urban wilderness.

“Do you think you know America? I mean do you think you know your own country? Well, I’ve got to tell you, you don’t. There is a religious political army of foot soldiers out there that is being directed by a political right. This is not tinfoil-hat conspiracy stuff. It’s happening.”

Some have compared Fischer’s summer camp to an Islamist madrasah. These pint-sized prophets, they say, in another 10 years will be strapping on bombs and blowing up abortion clinics.

For all of her protestations that their weapons are prayers, that their warfare is purely spiritual, that she’s simply “trying to raise kids who have a strong faith in their God and know why,” her secular critics have raised an alarm. Heed this: conservative Christians are America’s al-Qaeda.

Eamonn Bowles, president of Magnolia Pictures, the company distributing “Jesus Camp” has compared the film to a Rorschach test “for how you feel about religion.”

The message is in the eye of the beholder. Careful what you see.