Jack plays Edward Cole a self made billionaire. Cole has lots of ex-wives and employees, but not any real family to truly care for him. Even while in the hsopital battling for his life against cancer, his only visitor is his long time ever loyal personal assistance Matthew. Edward calls him Tommy instead and reminds him he can fire him anytime, which probably explains why he is not getting a lot of visitors.

His roommate in the hospital is Carter Chambers, played by Freeman. As you might guess, he’s much the opposite of Cole. He has a family who loves him and a wife of 45 years. But although he’s an extremely intelligent man who absolutely dominates Jeopardy, he has spent his life working as an auto mechanic. His wife got knocked up during his freshman year of college, and he dropped all of his life plans to support his family.

The two get to know each other and find out at about the same time their diagnosis calls for them to only live a few more months. The Bucket List is created. Now imagine the fun you could have with absolutely nothing to lose and a billionaires’ bank account at your disposal. Wanna see the Great Pyramids of Egypt? No problem, fire up the jet!

That’s the concept, but what really makes this movie work are the characters and two great actors to portray them. This is a perfect role for Jack at his current age. He makes a great grumpy geezer in the hospital. Their condition is handled very candidly with some admittedly dark humor. This is the type of thing director Robert Reiner, aka Meathead, has always been so good at, and Nicholson is the perfect guy to be able to get a laugh while his head is shoved in a toilet trying to puke up his little toe due to sickness from chemotherapy.

We went in expecting a movie tailored to an older adult audience and women with one of those bitter sweet tear jerker endings where everyone gets a good cry afterwards. I wont spoil the ending by commenting too much on that, but I’ll say there is so so much more to this movie. If you’re a fan of Jack, you’re going to love this movie. And there’s even a car chase of sorts thrown in with a couple of cars we really love. We give this one 4 stars, and it’s a great date movie as a bonus.

The Departed is a lot like Jenga except it’s played with people instead of wooden blocks. There are two columns of people – the Massachusetts State Police and the Irish Syndicate of Boston. At the top of one column is Captain Oliver Queenan (Sheen), the policeman with a serious hard on for the man at the top of the other column, Frank Costello (Nicholson), the leader of Boston’s Irish crime syndicate. Below each man are his various lieutenants, workers, and peons. And at the bottom of each column one will find the various “innocent bystanders” associated with each faction.

The two players in our game of fleshy Jenga are Billy Costigan (DiCaprio), a near wash-out cadet whose violent tendancies ironically earn him the chance to redeem himself by infiltrating Costello’s syndicate, and Colin Sullivan (Damon), Costello’s hand-picked operative assigned to join the state police and provide the syndicate with tipoffs as to what the badges are up to.

Costigan and Sullivan are each inserted into the columns of their enemies and the game is on. They both deftly manage to manuever and scheme as good moles do and the bodies start to pile up as they are pushed out of their respective columns. And all the while the two players are unaware of the other’s existence.

As the situation grows grim for both sides and the columns are starting to look a little shaky, it becomes obvious to the players that each camp has been compromised. This is when the pressure cooker gets cranked up. Both Costigan and Sullivan begin in earnest to learn who the other is so they can be exposed and eliminated. They bob and weave better than Muhammed Ali ever could and, before long, the bodies are flying out of the columns. And not just from the bottom end, either. After a couple of jolting and unexpected deaths, it becomes apparent that you can’t count anyone as being off limits to the grim reaper.

The final act is an elegant (if maybe a bit too contrived), whirling-dervish inspired dance of death. I was beginning to wonder at one point if they were going to run out of characters on the screen to off and would have to resort to killing gaffers, cameramen and maybe a caterer or two.

In addition to having this adrenalin-packed story, The Departed also benefits from some DAMN fine acting. DiCaprio, whom I’ve pretty much loathed previously, impressed me. Damon and Farmiga are in fine form as well. Jack Nicholson is..well…he’s Jack! Sheen & Baldwin manage to not make me want to hurl my lunch which, if you knew how much I couldn’t stand these men, you’d understand how impressive that is as well. The true standout of them all, however, is Wahlberg as Sheen’s right-hand man, Sgt. Dignam. He must have bribed the writers because he got almost ALL of the great lines and he delivers them with the zeal of a crusader and the viciousness of an inquisitor…and he easily steals every scene he’s in.

As great as the good stuff is, however the movie is not quite perfect. As alluded to earlier, some things are a bit too contrived. In addition to parts of the final act, the entire love triangle was bordering on being laughably ludicrous. Additionally, there are some gaps in the story…some leaps of logic, if you will, that will confuse some audience members at the end of the movie. I was confused a couple of times and had to think about how what I’d just seen could have plausibly happened…and I figured it out, but Scorsese really should have taken another 60-90 seconds of screen time to fill those gaps in. Hell, the movie is nearly two and half hours long; another minute or two wouldn’t have hurt.

Compared to the positives this movie has, however, these are relatively minor quibbles. I strongly recommend that everyone head out to see this one on opening weekend so as to avoid having your co-workers or neighbors accidently spoil the surprises for you. You’ll be glad you did!

A great movie, but a really mediocre DVD. Whenever it’s a Kubrick movie, you know you’re not getting widescreen. He shoots 1.33:1. The good news here is that if you have a regular TV set, you see it full screen with no letterbox without losing anything. But the bad news is if you have that good home theater setup with a widescreen TV you’re either stretching this image or putting bars on the sides.

However, in this case in addition to Kubrick’s eccentricity, you get a poor reproduction. You get used to it, but if you’ve been watching alot of newer movies with such great pictures, the flaws on this one really smack you across the face. Right in the opening scene driving into the mountains you see tons of artifacts and noise. The audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 and nothing to write home about either. This one will not make your speakers go boom.

Unfortunately I do not forsee a special edition of this one coming anytime soon, so if you’re a fan of the movie, you have to tolerate the flaws. The movie is still enjoyable, but the picture will distract you. You do at least get a “making of” which is quite good if you’re a fan of the movie or Kubrick in general.