However, we can agree that U Turn came out completely uncommercial, despite it's intentions. And please man, WTC is as commercial as you can possibly get. Just because it's a drama supposedly aiming to higher themes doesn't mean is not. It's a multi million dollar production starring Nicolas Cage, which tries pretty much the whole time of inspiring feelings of good vibe, brotherhood, love between heroic people, fighting against the odds, patriotism, and a lot of other very audience friendly feelings...Deliberately, Stone tried to make it less controversial and more commercial, and in my opinion he went too far. As far, in fact, that the movie seems coward in it's use of 9/11 as a starting point to then, not even be about it at all. As I said before, it is so generic you could change the towers for abandoned mines and the firemen for miners, and you could have called it THE MINE, and it would be the exact same movie. Magically, no one in the movie asks the questions everyone was asking that day: "who did this?, why? was it irak? was it terrorism? what was this?". So, the movie becomes bruckheimerish and boring. So, Stone tried, but failed, cause it's not even on his sensibilities. He's already all pumped up to make another one about the same subject, and he will very likely go back to his usual self. He did WTC as a way to get Hollywood execs trust again after Alexander bombed. And that's really all there it is to it.
Scorsese, on the other hand, deliberately makes The Departed as a commercial gangster film. Not GoodFellas or Casino, not even a morality tale. As he said, this is the first one of his films that tried to have a plot. And he suceeded. The film works. The consensus is that is great. Commercial movies should aspire to this kind of quality. This is where, in a sane world, dumbed down films like Superman Returns, Casino Royale, MI3 and all those "entertainment" movies would at least try to be.
Jack Nicholson's performance in The Departed is not one I have throughly analyzed, I've only seen the movie twice, and I take the man and the movie seriously enough to know that subsequent viewings will reveal more layers, as it has happened with the work of both Scorsese and Nicholson before. But it never strucked me at any time during my two viewings that he was unnecesarily extending the scenes. I thought he was supposed to be cracking up, losing his mind, getting more and more paranoid and unstable as a result of the menaces around him and his own phisical decadence. And it's a joy to watch him do it.
But this seems to be another discussion in which you and I can go on forever and never agree. so it's cool.