Review: The Departed (2006)

The Departed
reviewed by Sam Osborn

Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenplay: William Monahan
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Mark
Whalberg
MPAA Classification: R (strong brutal violence, pervasive language,
some strong sexual content and drug material)

My problem when reviewing a film like The Departed is that I tend to
veer towards broad exclamations of cinematic history and directorial
brilliance and, at times, a kind of divine intervention with the art of
moviemaking. Anyone who read my review of Brick will understand my
overindulgence in writing about great film. And so with that said and
with you readers warned, let me just make my one embarrassingly broad
statement about The Departed: if the following three years continue as
the preceding seven have, this film will probably stand as the greatest
work of film in this decade.

Scorsese has a tendency to hold such titles, as his Taxi Driver is
often thought to be the best film of the seventies, contending with
Chinatown and The Godfather. Raging Bull is often thought of as the
greatest film of the eighties, even though it was released at the very
cusp of the decade. And Goodfellas, made in 1990, is often thought of
as the great American film of the nineties, contending maybe with
Schindler's List and Silence of the Lambs. But whether or not my
broad prophetic praise is of any worth, it's simple and seemingly
natural to admit that The Departed is, at the very least, a damn good
slab of cinema.

The story is loosely based off the hugely successful Hong Kong action
trilogy, Infernal Affairs. I say loosely because Scorsese has made a
work of intense originality here. The story may have the skeleton of
its predecessor, but screenwriter William Monahan has massaged out a
flesh that's boldly American. The characters are the offspring of
immigrants; Irish immigrants who found opportunity in this land whether
or not it was held under the pretense of legality. The most villainous
of these is Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), the serpent's head to
the Irish Mob of Boston. Nicholson is in overdrive here, snarling his
vicious lines with every pound of evil his goateed face will allow.
When he executes a crying couple on a beach and the woman crumples
sideways instead of forwards, Costello chuckles to himself, looks to
his partner and snarls while laughing, "she fell funny."

Opposing Costello is Oliver Queenan (Martin Sheen) and his partner
Dignam (Mark Whalberg), heading up the painfully secretive undercover
portion of the Special Investigations Unit in the Massachusetts State
Police. The film works as a quiet battlefield, with each side
manipulating the actions of an inside man. Costello's boy, Colin
Sullivan (Matt Damon) is a quickly rising detective for the police,
soon to be heading up the force supposedly hunting down Costello.
Queenan's boy, William Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), is an unlikely
cadet turned undercover agent who scuttles his way into the inner
circle of Costello's crew. The result is a game of two cats and two
mice, all lunging for the same prize of ousting the rat.

No directorial prodigy could have made this picture. It's not a debut
of unlikely brilliance or any farce of beginner's luck. The Departed
is a film that could only have been made by a master of the art form.
Without effusing too broadly, it's a work of experience. Scorsese has
a deep hat full of tricks, and the choices he makes as to the tricks
he'll reveal are choices no textbook, no teacher, and no film critic
can explain. Only a man with so many movies under his belt could have
constructed this film as it is, and trying to catalogue the vast number
of techniques he utilized in the process would probably only reveal
that Scorsese knows more than me about the art of cinema.

But I can at least say that it's rare for us to be so affected by an
action movie. We fall in love easily enough in a romance, we scare
pretty easy by horror, and we're all devastated by the sadness
expounded in a historical drama. But only in the most original works of
the action genre are we left so completely flabbergasted as The
Departed left us.
Rating: 4 out of 4
Sam Osborn