@overnow said:
@notnert427: The rat thing just straight up doesn't matter to me. It's a rat in front of a golden church and there's symbolism there, but I don't really care about it one way or another. I loved the surprise elevator doors opening part and the [spoiler] abrupt 3 kills. It really looks like Leo is going to expose the corruption and get his life back then [/spoiler]
As for the Dignum part, throughout the whole movie he was a total dick to Costigan, never trusted him, and let his issues with Costigan keep him from showing up to the building where the elevator scene happened. I think it was a combination of that and Queenen being the only person he seemed to truly like that led him to [spoiler] killing Sullivan [/spoiler] Oh and also I think he was afraid that the feds [spoiler] would let Sullivan walk in exchange for info he had related to Costello's operations, Dignam expresses pretty intense mistrust of feds earlier in the film [/spoiler] but also it just wraps things up, it's this nice long movie that doesn't move particularly quickly, and then shit hits the fan and it goes batshit crazy right till the end and there's something about that that I love. That's the thing, not every ending has to be some big elaborat ending. This one just seemed like the perfect way to wrap up this clusterfuck of rats everywhere.
Thanks for that, truly. That's the best defense of the ending I've heard. However, we're still going to have to agree to disagree. I found the ending to be pure shock value, which to me is a complete cop-out. It felt like Scorcese didn't know how to end it with anything substantive, so he just said, "eh, let's just kill everybody". And Scorcese has since gone off the deep end with shock value crap like Wolf of Wall Street, but that's another topic.
I didn't need some happy ending or anything from The Departed, either. I thought the most befitting ending after the reveal that Costello was an FBI informant would have been for Costigan to shoot Sullivan just as he was about to kill Costello. Then Costigan tells Costello he's bringing him in because protection from the feds doesn't change what side of the law he's really on. Then have Costello kill Costigan and tell him something like "I'm on all sides, kid. Your mistake was picking one." Close with the rat scene, and roll credits.
I mean, Costello was pretty much the "king rat" who was painted in the whole film as an untouchable crime boss, so one could argue he should have survived. Or, hell, I would have even been okay with Costigan accepting the futility of trying to bring Costello down and putting a bullet in him. Just something with some sort of resolution, as opposed to the nonsensical headshots in rapid succession. I honestly wouldn't have been bothered so much if the vast majority of The Departed hadn't been excellent, but that ending was just so underwhelming to me.
Log in to comment