The Rep Rap

With a new Martin Scorsese film out, Slate looks at his career and asks what happened? The last decade has been his most commercially successful (thanks Leo), but his critical standing is the lowest it's ever been.

I'm in the camp that thinks he's always been overrated, but I agree that while his earlier films showed a certain passion, the ones he makes lately, no matter how popular, feel flat. He still has the fancy camera shots, but not the sense of action and excitement underneath.

Some say it's because he's started playing the Hollywood game. What does it serve a man to win an Oscar if he lose his soul? I think there's more to the argument he just got tired. (No doubt contrarian critics will eventually look beneath "later" Scorsese and announce it superior to his early work.)

If anything, the Slate article is too nice. Look at this on The Departed: "For all its crackle and pop, it was merely very good—peerless technique in the service of a borrowed vision..." Except it wasn't very good, it was very bad. If he's still making very good films after 40 years of big-time filmmaking, the critics have nothing to complain about.