The challenge in becoming a well-respected director is being able to deliver the same level of artistic cinema while remaining fresh enough to be interesting. Woody Allen gained critical praise (including mine) for his 2005 film Match Point, a departure from the Manhattan settings of his most well-known romantic comedies. That same praise is now being lavished upon Martin Scorcese, who uprooted his history of crime drama and moved it from New York to Boston and Italians to Irishmen for his new film The Departed. But it’s not new digs that make Scorcese so successful here. His last two films have been loaded up with Academy-luring bombast and have been less about Martin than Oscar. Freed from the self importance of Gangs of New York and The Aviator, though, Scorcese returns to what he knows and his audience loves.
Based on a Hong Kong thriller called Internal Affairs, The Departed goes deep into Boston’s organized crime scene, headed up by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Costello grooms young Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) through the ranks of the Massachusetts police academy, setting him up as a mole in the state department. Meanwhile, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), a young man as rough as Sullivan is polished, flunks out of his placement exam for the “staties” and becomes an undercover officer, burying himself within Costello’s gang. When a leak on each end is discovered, Sullivan and Costigan are charged with sniffing each other out.
The script, adapted by Kingdom of Heaven writer William Monahan, keeps the audience in the know throughout the movie, creating a gripping tension between the viewer and the characters. This, compounded with the graphic violence, makes every murder executed in the name of uncovering the mole even harder to bear for the viewer. More importantly, it places an onus on plot advancement, and Monahan’s script adds the necessary drive to Scorcese’s legendary characterization, keeping the film moving. And at two and a half hours, it needs that mobility: despite Monahan’s efforts, and even though there’s almost no fat to trim from the finished product, it feels every bit as long as it is.
Damon and DiCaprio are spectacular in their roles, each needing to pull of an underhanded duality of nature in order to fool their undercover assignments. Damon seems happy to be back working with his Bostonian accent and solidifies himself as one of the most versatile actors of his age group. DiCaprio has finally grown out of resting on his boyish good looks and puts together a mature, affecting performance. Nicholson, meanwhile, is stellar. His Costello is a smart, witty, cold-hearted maniac. Watching his performance reaffirms all your reasons for ever wanting to go to the movies.
Surrounded by a host of brilliant performances – Martin Sheen as the time-tested orchestrator of polic undercover operations, Mark Wahlberg as the wise-cracking hardass assistant to Sheen’s cop boss, Vera Faminga as the strong female psychologist holding her own even while surrounded by overbearing machismo – the big three highlight scenes in all the right places. Everyone in the cast hits the right notes at the perfect times.
The Departed, for all its spot-on acting, shadowed camerawork, and tight editing, doesn’t feel like the groundbreaking, “best movie in the past decade” film that critics are dubbing it to be, but what it is – an entertaining, disturbing, entirely enjoyable mobster drama – is more than enough to note it as one of the better films of the year.
Rating: * * * * of 5