Way to Ruin a Good Thing

You know what's a great movie? The Departed.
It's got an all-star cast, a solid plot, it moves at a quick pace so there are no parts that feel too long, good action, lots of swearing, enough violence to seem gritty without over-doing it and a descent soundtrack featuring the Dropkick Murphys. The fact that it's based in Boston is just a bonus. Apart from some horrible attempts at Boston accents (my contention is the only two Boston-bred actors, Matt Damon and Mark Walhberg, were asked to make their accents worse so as to not shine a light on just how bad Martin Sheen and Leo DiCaprio were), it's a top movie from start to finish.

You know what's not a great movie? The Departed when it's on basic cable.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that The Departed was going to be on the FX network on Tuesday night. I knew that it was going to have to be heavily edited to make it through the censors, but since it's FX I was expecting them to get away with a little more than usual. Instead I was greeted with a lot of heavy edits, skipped scenes and voice dubbing to cover the swears, a couple of which didn't even make sense. ("You're a fast riser... like a 12-year old scotch." - what the hell does that even mean?) Ruined the viewing experience for me.

This of course speaks to the larger issue of what movies they should and shouldn't be editing for cable and instead leave them to stay for mature audiences only. Look, I know we want to let everyone feel included nowadays, but certain movies should just be left to the adults. Not every movie needs to be ripped to shreds just so it can be shown to the general public. I think the standard should be as followed: if there is one scene where the censors are forced to dub over literally every single line of dialog, then you should just give up and pick a new movie.