1 comment

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  Gabriella Sloan

  2 years ago

  Really enjoyed reading your review on The Departed. I saw it on Tuesday, and its images have stayed with me - something a film hasn't done for quite a while. I agree with you that the performance among all the terrific ones in the film was certainly DiCaprio's. He reminds me very much of Montgomery Clift as well as James Dean. He is not the new DeNiro as a lot of pundits like to say; DiCaprio is a force of his own. I've enjoyed his work from This Boy's Life to What's Eating Gilbert Grape to The Aviator. He was terrific in all of those but lost among those is his work in Marvin's Room, Total Eclipse, and for Basketball Diaries. He makes interesting role choices and in contrast to someone like Matt Damon who is a perfectly good actor, DiCaprio has been choosy about his picks and willing to develop projects that take a long time to come to fruition. He is often portrayed in the media as a teen idol off the Titanic ship, a party-hardy twit, with no work ethic. As far as the party-hardy label, well, if you go back to Nicholson's younger days and even Scorsese's, they had as much fun (Jack still is apparently) and no one thought the less of them because of it. As far as work ethic, if one believes people like Scorsese and Spielberg, DiCaprio takes his work as an actor extremely seriously and though not a method actor, studies and does homework to prepare for a role months before the actual work. I'm glad to see with The Departed, that quite a number of people who had previously dismissed him have taken notice and I look forward to his future work. He is only 31 ; I believe DeNiro was well into his mid 30s when he took on his first pivotal role in Taxi Driver.
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