Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon shine in this taught, cat-and-mouse good cop/bad cop action thriller remake of the popular 2002 Asian hit Infernal Affairs.
Billy Costigan (DiCaprio), a young police academy graduate, is sent undercover to infiltrate mob-man Frank Costello's (Jack Nicholson) crime gang.
Recent Academy grad Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) has risen through the ranks to be accepted in the Massachusetts State police. He is assigned the case of busting mob boss Frank Costello.
Here’s the kicker. Sullivan is loyal to Costello. Bad cop. Billy Costigan is loyal to the police. Good cop. Costigan wants Costello dead. Sullivan wants to help Costello. It’s only a matter of time before Costigan and Sullivan figure each other out and try to stop one another.
The Departed is one of director Martin Scorsese’s best films. The cat-and-mouse game played by DiCaprio and Damon is one big thrilling roller coaster ride of intense thrills and excessive blood spills. Scorsese has taken elements from some of his past films including Mean Streets and Goodfellas, using them to craft the film into a better vision than the original.
The best scene in the film has DiCaprio and Damon on the cell phone to one another, without them actually speaking. Each one has figured out to whom they are talking, and by cutting back and forth between shots of each character, Scorsese creates an unbelievable amount of tension that you can cut with a knife. This in turn aggravates the scenes in which Costigan and Sullivan actually meet.
Both DiCaprio and Damon are extremely good in their roles. Both play their parts well, Boston accents and all. Jack Nicholson is the epitome of evil, brining in a little Joker (among other pieces of his extended oeuvre) to the role of Frank Costello. He isn’t over the top in his role; he takes every scene and uses everything he has to make the villain shine.
But this isn’t just Nicholson’s film. There is a wonderful supporting cast of characters including Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen and the Oscar-nominated Mark Wahlberg who help turn this film into the picture that will probably win Scorsese his long-overdue first Oscar. (It's a shame he didn't win for Raging Bull or Goodfellas, because he deserved the award more-so for those films, especially the former.)
The Departed shines with it's outstanding cast and superb direction. Though bloody and graphic at times, the film is uncompromising in its stark reality, true to Scorsese form, and will go down in history as one of the great mob films.
Movies it was nominated with for Best Picture:
Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima; Little Miss Sunshine; The Queen
Is the movie worth your time to watch?
9/10 18-02-07
