The Departed

HUGE

Martin Scorsese is still, undeniably, one of America’s great film makers despite the AMPAS’s failure to give him the 2004 Oscar for The Aviator; an excellent biopic on the late mogul Howard Hughes. I still remember how captivated I was back in 76 when I saw Taxi Driver. At eighteen and ready to graduate from high school, I believe it was my first Scorsese film and I was quite impressed by the drama ,yet, a bit shocked by the raw violence.

Of course, Scorsese is no stranger to film violence. He handled it admirably in Gangs of New York, Goodfellas and his unnerving recreation of 1961’s Cape Fear. He returns to these very roots in The Departed. Some crime dramas make you jump from your seat like abrupt scenes in a horror movie. Scorsese makes sure you experience the graphic brutality in his film from that perspective.

Based upon the highly acclaimed Hong Kong thriller, Infernal Affairs, Scorsese masterfully Americanizes the story, using Boston, Massachusetts as the back drop. Like it’s Chinese counterpart, The Departed centers on a war between gangsters and cops. Specifically, the Irish Mafia and the Boston State Police.

Leonardo Dicaprio, in his third outing with the Italian helmer, plays Billy Costigan, a young Boston Police trainee whom you immediately feel sympathy for during an interview when caustic police Sgt Dignam(Mark Wahlberg) runs down his not so illustrious family history. Oliver Queenan (Martin Sheen), chief of special unit, is the primary interviewer. He persuades Costigan to go undercover as an “ex-cop”, infiltrating Mafioso Frank Costello’s (Jack Nicholson) band of henchmen so they can nail him on a variety of charges.

On the flip side, Matt Damon’s Colin Sullivan is a recent graduate of the Boston State Police academy planted as a mole by Costello himself . While being a primary detective on the Costello capture, his real job is to thwart the forces’ efforts by keeping his boss one step ahead of the cops.

From here, it’s a proverbial cat and mouse game, tensions rising every second as you watch each man trying to smoke out their antagonist. At 2 hours and 30 minutes, William Monahan’s script does not waist too much time setting this up. Some scenes could have been excluded, but the rigorous match between the two probably wouldn’t have been as interesting.

Even more intriguing are some of the supporting cast, like Alec Baldwin’s police chief Ellerby. A bit of a hot head at times, especially about getting Costello , I found it quite similar to his sardonic roles in Elizabethtown and the indie, State and Main. Baldwin’s talent for being hmourously serious is priceless. Another appealing additon to the mix is Vera Farmiga (Paul Walker’s wife in Running Scared) as police shrink Madolyn. She gets to know Billy and Colin intimately as well as psychologically. You get the idea that she herself is in emotional crisis as she sways between the two almost regularly.

While Di Caprio and Damon play some of their best roles, Jack Nicholson’s implacable performance as Costello holds The Departed together. His portrayal of the head honcho leaves no doubts in your mind that he is the king of his territory and no one in their right mind would dare cross him. Through connections with one of his right hands, Mr. French, Costello takes in Billy as a member of the gang. But not before a brutal test.

With two equally matched adversaries crossing foreign terrain, Scorsese presents a unique example of modern film noir where loyalty and corruption become blurred in a world where there are no winners or losers- for the police or the Mafia. We can only hope that somehow, justice will prevail no matter how crooked both sides are.