A walk in the dark

I watched Scorsese's The Departed with my wife the other night. I didn't get the chance to see it in the theater, so we got the fireplace roaring and settled into our den and watched the dvd. With a line-up like the one for this movie (Nicholson, DeCaprio, Sheen, Walhberg, Damon, Baldwin), your biggest fear is that even with all that firepower it's not going to be all you hoped it would be. Nothing could be further from the truth about this movie. It delivers, and in a big way. I have no idea if Scorsese will finally win his first directorial Oscar, but I'd vote for him after seeing this film. The movie does a wonderful job of portraying how closely to the edge of right and wrong all of us can walk, and how sometimes there's no line at all, we instead just have to trust our steps.

Based on the way my week has gone, the movie also caused me to think about how easy it is to be hurt or angered by those whom we just knew we could trust, but then found out we should have never done so in the first place. At this point in my life, I would much rather endure the injury done by the person who made it clear from the beginning they intended to harm me, than to have to deal with the knife in my back from someone I was sure could and should be trusted. In the movie, Nicholson's character says that when it appeared someone had betryaed him, but he couldn't figure out who it was, he just killed everybody in his crew. A bit severe for sure, but obviously at the end of all that he at least knew he'd gotten the rat.

Since that's not the way any of us are going to handle the betrayals done to us, what will we do? I guess this takes us back to what I said earlier about having to trust your steps when the line has disappeared. And believe me, most of us are there right now, or we will be soon. My advice is to step firmly, stay out of the shadows, and make sure everybody knows where you stand. If you do that, the rats will have tendency to show themselves for who they are. Oh, and one more thing: watch your back.