Despite the fact that Martin Scorsese's new movie is actually a remake of a popular Hong Kong import (Infernal Affairs) — with the action resituated here to a largely Irish-American Boston several removes from the director's familiar New York/Italian stomping grounds — The Departed is nothing if not a sure-footed return to form.
The Departed is Scorsese's first bona fide gangster flick since Casino, some 11 years ago, and it's smart, stylish, consistently engaging and visceral (rather than simply violent, although it's that, too) in a way the director's movies haven't been in years. This is not the very best movie Scorsese has made, but it's certainly up there in the top tier — arguably the best one he's made since Goodfellas — and that alone would seem to position The Departed as an all but certain shoe-in for that richly deserved Oscar that's been alluding the director for ages.
Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio star as rookie cops who, each in his way, strike up Faustian bargains that generate all sorts of internal conflicts and necessitate them leading double lives. Damon, the more fatally compromised of the pair, rises to a position of power within the police department, while secretly serving as an informer for his childhood mentor — the same, ruthless gangster boss he's supposed to be investigating (Jack Nicholson, thoroughly Mephistophelian, right down to his goatee). Meanwhile, DiCaprio's character finds himself in an equally sticky situation, recruited by his superiors to work as a mole deep inside Nicholson's criminal organization. The cops and the gangsters are both aware they've been infiltrated by the other side, although they're not aware of the informants' identities, and Damon and DiCaprio each finds himself in the curious position of being charged with rooting out a mole who is, in fact, himself.
The film's plot occasionally becomes a bit too convoluted for its own good, but that's ultimately just part of the high-energy, cat-and-mouse fun, briskly communicated in easily digestible chunks that make The Departed seem considerably shorter than its two-and-a-half-hour running time. Nicholson is excellent here, as are Damon and DiCaprio (who, shades of De Niro and Pacino in Heat, don't even share a scene together until the final 15 minutes), and all of the characters are meticulously developed to the point where their fluid and often dubious moralities become fascinating, rather than simply off-putting. The perfectly chosen soundtrack constantly churning at the edges of the film (Exile-era Stones and primal scream Lennon dominate) is the icing on the cake.
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2006.
