Rat

Please understand that if you plan on seeing The Departed, that this post contains.... SPOILERS!

Mark and I took a rare trip to the movies today. Sleeping in, Irish breakfast at the local pub (traditional and super delish), and a movie? I know...

We saw The Departed, which I was psyched to see because I ran into Martin Sheen on Beacon Street while he was in town to film the movie. Also because the exterior cafe shot with Delahunt and the Irish goon was actually a dry-cleaners on Charles Street that was set dressed for the shot for one day, and I saw them doing it.

!!!SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS!!!

Well, I sat through a two-amd-a-half hour movie, and didn't notice the time pass, but two things ruined the film for me. First, good-guy Martin Sheen gets tossed off a Southie warehouse, which just makes me sad (in my head he's still former President Jed Bartlet from the West Wing), and secondly, when Donnie Wahlberg's character shoots Sgt. Colin Sullivan at the end, and you see the rat walking on the balcony, I can't stop thinking, "Christ is that preachy, corny and obvious!" Also, rats in Beacon Hill don't need to climb that high, they stay on the ground where the trash is better. Yeah, yeah, I know it was part of the ongoing social commentary and whatnot, but I was offended. I'm smart enough to get the moral of the story with a trained rat to help me out. And whether the rat was purely symbolic, or some kind of statement about how a new sleezeball will spring up when an old one dies, I still thought of both sans rat symbolism, and I always thought Scorcese was above that.

In the end though, good movie. I was pretty riveted. Until the rat.