My fiancée laughs at me

[jere7my]

35 minutes into The Departed:

Me: "Wait—why is Jack Nicholson introducing himself to this guy? Didn't we see Nicholson giving him a graduation present at the start of the movie?"

adfamiliares: "That was the other guy."

Me: "What other guy?"

adfamiliares: "Matt Damon. This is Leonardo DiCaprio."

Me: "...Are you fucking with me?"

adfamiliares: "What?"

Me: "There are two different guys?"

So, I spent the first half hour of the movie thinking it was doing really deep and hard-to-follow things with identity and loyalty, presenting a character who was loyal to both the mob and the police, and internally conflicted about it. I thought the cops had some insanely complicated scheme to create a double identity for him, to the point of scheduling two meetings with him, one after the other, and treating him entirely differently at different times.

Then it turned out they were two different guys.

In my defense, they are both blandly attractive guys with nigh-identical hair and outfits and Boston accents. And they hadn't been in a scene together. And their family backgrounds were confusingly similar.

*sigh*

The movie was otherwise quite good, particularly Nicholson's flailing, malicious decrepitude and Baldwin's self-amused impenetrable denseness. I enjoyed finally being able to play the native New Yorker's game of movie geography—"Hey, the red line doesn't stop at Government Center. That's Park Street!"

Comments

[amyprime.livejournal.com]

See, I saw the previews for this movie, and knew that would happen to me, which is why I didn't go. (Well, that, and I hardly ever go to movies.)

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

I have that problem in movies where all the men wear hats. Like pretty much everything from the 40's.

Mis-Identity Problems

[mst3kforall.livejournal.com]

It took me an episode or two to realize that the reason Benjamin Bratt in Law and Order reruns I was watching could suddenly act, was because he was Chris Noth;-) And they don't even look alike! But I had it on in the background while I was doing other things.

[adfamiliares.livejournal.com]

Come on, we went over this! DiCaprio = goatee; Damon = no goatee. How hard is that? Also, DiCaprio is skinnier, and has his brow furrowed through most of the movie.

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

ok, I almost spilled my tea when I started laughing just now.

In your defense, they actually look a lot alike. Something about the eyes and hair.

[glynhogen.livejournal.com]

[Insert joke about how you should avoid Infernal Affairs because Asian guys all look alike.]

[superbacana.livejournal.com]

I did have that problem at times when watching Infernal Affairs; I'm pretty sure I can pick Tony Leung out of a lineup, but the parallel stories made it confusing.

When I saw the The Departed, I was thanking my lucky stars that it wasn't Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg, in which case I too would have been lost.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

But DiCaprio didn't grow the goatee until after the 35-minute mark, and kept gaining and losing it in flashbacks!

[adfamiliares.livejournal.com]

No way: he'd had the goatee for at least 15 minutes before he met Jack Nicholson at 35 minutes. You're right about the flashbacks, though.