Oct 11, 2006 04:52 AM
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Dir: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, Ray Winstone, Martin Sheen, Vera Farmiga.
Dynamite director Marty Scorsese makes an explosive return to form with this blistering crime thriller that’s guaranteed to have fans of Goodfellas cheering in the aisles. Unlike most directors, Scorsese has a God-given talent for grabbing you by the balls in the opening few moments of his films and this is no exception.
From the moment you hear Nicholson’s opening voiceover backed by the Rolling Stones classic Gimme Shelter, you’re hooked. Loosely based on the Infernal Affairs triad trilogy, The Departed boasts a mouth-watering line-up of top-notch acting talent.
Screen legend Nicholson, making his first appearance in a Scorsese picture, takes top billing alongside young pretenders Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon. As if that wasn’t enough, back-up is supplied by Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen and West Ham’s favourite son Ray Winstone.
The film is set in Boston where the Massachusetts State Police are waging all-out war on the city’s top crime ring. The story is a complex and clever one, although it does take a while to get going. But with Nicholson providing a characteristically dry introduction to the south Boston underworld and some nice acting to watch, I didn't mind the wait.
What emerges is a double betrayal, with Matt Damon playing Collin Sullivan, a corrupt policeman who keeps Costello informed on the activities of the organised crime squad, while Scorsese favourite Leonardo DiCaprio is Billy Costigan, an undercover cop who has infiltrated Costello's gang and keeps police informed of their goings-on. Their duplicitious lives are about to converge.
Having cast two actors of shared boyish looks, Scorsese underlines their similarities at every opportunity: they come from the same background, they dress similarly and at one point even unwittingly share the same girlfriend, a police psychiatrist played by Vera Farmiga.
The line between good and bad, which is a fine one, seems to be Scorsese's central point, and it can be one small incident - in this case Sullivan's boyhood encounter with a misleadingly avuncular Costello - that sends an individual down one path or the other. This may be last chance we get to see Nicholson blending that wicked trademark humour with a still-believable sense of real menace.
Damon and DiCaprio provide convincing support but, with a screenplay that has been polished that has been polished until it glistens, it's the very funny cameos from Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin, both playing Boston cops that stay in the memory long after the film's rather over-protracted ending has finally come to a bloody close.
There are some terrific speeches, I particularly enjoyed Alec Baldwin's tirade about the importance of police officers marrying, and Wahlberg also has some great insults, all unprintable in a review on MouthShut.
Scorsese injects some dark humour and gives Jackyboy some lines which will be quoted for decades to come. He tells a young Sullivan: “You do good in school? I did too. They call that a paradox.”
The themes are betrayal, identity and redemption while the violence is vicious. And yet there are gnawing issues. The plot hangs on enormours contrivances, while Jack unbalances everything. But then that' the point. This is a post-Sopranos gangster movie about psychosis, schizophrenia and madness.
At its core, The Departed is a well-crafted, well-written, well-acted and fantastically directed film noir that is packed full of instantly quotable dialogue and brutal edge-of-your-seat action. It’ll blow you away.
If there are to be awards to be had for The Departed, they will go to either Jack Nicholson, who is excellent as Boston mob boss Frank Costello, or ti it's director, Martin Scorsese, arguably the greatest living director never to have won an Oscar.
