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Post by SeanJoyce on Mar 15, 2024 7:55:20 GMT
Ay ay mates and lasses, it's been too long since we've revived this classic donnybrook...and what a perfect time it is, with St. Paddy's Day just around the corner!
The answer is and always will be: State of Grace. Scorsese's film, despite being nearly two decades newer, has aged poorly IMO. It was hip and fresh when it came out, now it feels too try-hard and wannabe edgy. The Irish mob element isn't treated reverently, with Nicholson's buffoonish pastiche of Whitey Bulger adding a sideshow element to things, and it suffers comparisons to both its more somber predecessor (Infernal Affairs) and what is, IMO, the greatest Irish mob movie ever made.
Every element of State of Grace is so vividly real and "lived in". The powerhouse ensemble bests the flashier one of The Departed, the combination of gritty cinematography and Morricone's plaintive score elicits a genuine emotional response, and the stakes feel greater for everybody involved. An absolute triumph of late-80s/early 90s moviemaking. Gary Oldman's incendiary portrayal of Jackie, a volatile thug who kills with impulsiveness yet is blindly devout to everybody close to him is still his finest hour.
So please, be sure to observe the Marquess of Queensbury rules, and come out fightin'!
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 15, 2024 20:26:48 GMT
Hmmm....I don't have a dog in this fight but State of Grace's ending isn't as memorable - the set-up though is great........The Departed is one of those movies that people say that annoying af expression "it slaps" (really, just shut up Generation Useless).....BUT...it kind of does slap with the ending, no?
I don't mean the last scene either btw
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Post by futuretrunks on Mar 15, 2024 22:24:35 GMT
The Departed, by far. It's wildly entertaining. State of Grace has a good Oldman performance, but is a so-so film and infinitely less memorable than The Departed.
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Post by Martin Stett on Mar 15, 2024 22:41:45 GMT
I have never heard of State of Grace in my life, so now I have something to keep an eye out for
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Post by stephen on Mar 15, 2024 22:57:09 GMT
One of them doesn't have a ruinous Jack Nicholson performance stinking up the joint, so State of Grace wins by default.
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cherry68
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Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.
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Post by cherry68 on Mar 15, 2024 23:02:23 GMT
I have never heard of State of Grace in my life, so now I have something to keep an eye out for Sacrilege. |
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Post by franklin on Mar 16, 2024 0:10:55 GMT
The Departed but i would vote State of Grace only for Gary Oldman's performance.
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cherry68
Based
Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.
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Post by cherry68 on Mar 16, 2024 7:23:01 GMT
The departed was a bit painful to follow, one of those movies I have no desire to rewatch.
On the other side, Oldman in State of Grace was totally magnetic. Let's say that probably his being half Irish helped in his convincing performance.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 16, 2024 8:00:28 GMT
Can we just talk about that acting move Oldman does where he acts out "turning around" without someone dying in mockery of Penn's line "every time you turn around someone dies" (iirc).....normally I hate when people reduce acting to "actor's moves" but THAT particular move is a Mean Streets / Panic in Needle Park level one of a kind of lightning in a bottle......he almosts jumps off the screen it is that exciting a kind of acting .......in that early period he would do little things like that quite often and it really could take your breath away......that scene in The Firm (his best performance btw) - maybe improvised (?) where he fights with his Lesley Manville and they scream at each other in such a terrifying way it makes all other such movie scenes seem phony and contrived  |
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Post by ibbi on Mar 16, 2024 14:39:21 GMT
I have never been as enamored with State of Grace as many. It's nice, sure, but it always struck me as a pretty dime-a-dozen mob pic. It was completely overshadowed by Scorsese's artistry like a week after it was released, and I think the same goes for this comparison. I do agree with what you say about Nicholson. It's a totally selfish posturing piece of work, but buffoonish pastiche is also a term I might use to describe the performance in State of Grace that everyone loses their minds over too, so that doesn't help. Anyway, I've totally turned around on The Departed over the years. I was very much in the camp of 'I can't believe he's winning his Oscar for so minor a work' when it came out, but man, my appreciation for it has grown to the point I might have it in a top 10 of his work. Dismissing it as pop thrills is a mistake, it is a wondrous reworking of the original film. It has its issues, for sure, but it's a perfect portrait of lost/split identities in a traumatized world that to me is closer in intent to The Godfather in a lot of ways than the surface-level elements it shares with State of Grace. (More importantly, it's good to see you again  ) |
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Post by mrimpossible on Mar 17, 2024 7:36:08 GMT
One film is very underrated while the other is one of the most overrated of all time. State of Grace.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Mar 18, 2024 14:35:08 GMT
The Departed quite easily. But Oldman gives a better performance in State of Grace than anything in The Departed.
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