The biggest shock is that Scorsese's moviemaking is so untoned. Even Casino (1995), disastrously over-narrated as it was, showed more technical control. Here the cinematography is edgy in what seems like an entirely random way. (You pick up the visual references to The Third Man (1949) precisely because they stick out like cowlicks.) There's no click here between the director and his subject matter, and because he hasn't thought the material out in terms of sequences, the movie has no discernible larger rhythms. The actors are good enough that the movie is interesting moment-to-moment even though it feels aimless compared to the tight original. After it lumbered to a close, it took me about ten minutes to realize how much I had liked Damon's performance, and another day for DiCaprio's to register.
Scorsese has never been more respected than he is now and yet in his latest movies he's been turning into a monument to his former glory. It may be an inevitable fate for the most "intense" director in American movie history. By age 64 it shouldn't be surprising if he's burned through the kinds of obsessions and passions that made him famous, but, hell, Wagner with Parsifal, and Verdi with both Otello and Falstaff, were still pushing their art forward when they were even older. If any veteran director still has great work in him, I would bet it's Scorsese. If, unlike The Departed, that great work doesn't take the form of projects he can pre-sell to the industry gatekeepers based on his previous successes, however, we may never get to see it.
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