'The Departed' - How to Remake Foreign Films Properly

Hollywood doesn't have a great track record when it comes to adapting foreign films. More often than not the result is a watered down, sanitized and generic version of a superior original product. However sometimes, albeit rarely, everything falls into place. The right director is teamed with the ideal writer to adapt the work and they bring in the best suited actors and crew for the project. By this standard, the Oscar winning film "The Departed" may stand as the best American adaptation of a foreign film ever.

The movie is based off the Chinese film "Infernal Affairs," which detailed the parallel stories of a law enforcement agent undercover in a criminal triad and a triad member who had infiltrated the police department. The original was released in 2002 and was well received in it's homeland, as well as here in the US (though it only received limited release here.) Fans of the original at first balked at the talk of an American remake, that is until the talent started to be hired. The idea of director Martin Scorsese returning to gangster movies was a thrill to almost any film-goer, and the cast was immediately impressive with such big names as Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson sharing almost equal screen time.

Writer William Monahan chose to set the film in his hometown of Boston, rather than New York where most modern American gangster movies take place. By drawing from what he knew Monahan was able to take a film that was firmly rooted in the country it was made in ("Infernal Affairs" deals heavily with the ins and outs of the Chinese triad) and make it feel completely at home in Boston. Monahan was able to draw on many real life figures of the Boston criminal scene while changing very few of the actual events from the original film. Real gangsters like Whitey Bulger and his Winter Hill Gang helped inform the characters that appeared on the screen. The result is a film that on paper is nearly identical to the original yet the feel is extremely different and very much American. So often what fails in an American remake is that the core of the story is changed. This was not the case here at all, the story at its heart is exactly the same but all the outer trappings have been tinkered with and fine tuned to work as an American film. Monahan earned the Academy award for writing an adapted screenplay for his work on this film, and it was well earned.

Also earning an Academy Award was director Martin Scorsese who took the work Monahan put on the page and translated it into great visuals that were steeped in Boston imagery. By casting native Bostonians such as Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg in the film it added even great authenticity to the proceedings. Ultimately what makes this film such a successful remake is that the people involved didn't set out to just rehash the work that was done before. Instead they set out to take the concept and build the best possible film they could, the original film served as a seed rather than a crutch. It's a shame that more adaptations of foreign movies don't have such ambitious approaches, and are content to either regurgitate the same movie in English or just don't seem to respect the material. We could use more films like "The Departed."