I loved Mark Shanahan’s Globe piece on The Departed, the most overrated Boston crime movie of them all. Here’s Mark on the flick’s awful Boston accents and a certain actor’s overacting:

Instead, the city’s avatar is a bad accent — a bunch of them, actually. Even local boys Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg, who should know better, lean a little too hahd into the Dorchester dialect. Alec Baldwin? He’s not playing a Boston cop, he’s parodying one. Thankfully, Jack Nicholson doesn’t attempt an accent, but he still manages to make mob boss Frank Costello a cartoon, more slapstick than satanic; Nicholson’s performance is absurdly over-the-top, even for him, and it undermines the movie.

To me, Nicholson’s casting ruined the movie. From the get go, it was Jack Nicholson playing Jack Nicholson.

I agree with Shanahan that The Town is a much better Boston crime film, drawing inspiration from Michael Mann’s Heat. But Ben Affleck’s The Town also drew inspiration from arguably the greatest Boston crime movie of them all: The Friends of Eddie Coyle, starring Robert Mitchum. Based on George Higgins’s classic novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle can be a slow, tedious movie at times, but it really captures Boston of the 1970s, when the Winter Hill Gang and Whitey reigned supreme here. It ultimately earned higher Rotten Tomato ratings than both The Departed and The Town.

Update — From a reader: “I actually like The Depahhted, though I agree The Town is a more authentic/better Boston crime movie.   Eddie Coyle is awesome… opening bank robbery exterior shot in Dedham Square!  One of my (old friends) has a role in the North Shore home invasion (scene).”