I was complaining to a friend about the final half-hour of Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, and he suggested I was looking at it all wrong. If you see the movie as a serious cop-and-gangster thriller, it does fall apart, with its escalating body count and that blunt-instrument final shot, juxtaposing unattainable dreams with vermin.
But if you see it as a comedy ... .
It’s a tempting reading, because the movie holds together slightly better. An absurdist futility pervades the film, and the bleakness is so complete that it approaches being funny. (But without, you know, actually being funny.) The last act of The Departed reminded me of Adaptation; in both, the writer (here William Monahan) gave up and caved in to his basest inclination. In Adaptation, it was done with a wink.
In Scorsese’s movie, though, the tone is fatalistic instead of comic.
That's Just Nitpicking, Isn't It?