A Fight to the Finish

Rating: Null/10 (13 June 2007)

During the late 1970s, in South Boston, Irish mobster Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) selected his ten year old, future protégée, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), to graduate from the Massachusetts State Police Academy. When he finally graduated from the academy fifteen years later and subsequently became an informer for Costello, one of his classmates, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), was assigned as an undercover cop to filter through the corrupt, underground business of Costello. His administrators, Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) and Queenam (Martin Sheen), require him to wait until the exact right moment to take down Costello. Both Costigan and Sullivan are overrun by their double-lives as they are determined to find the "rat" in both the mafia and in the Police.
In "The Departed" Martin Scorsese tries to depict a simple message: you get what is coming to you. This message is not depicted until the very end of the movie when Sullivan is shot when he walks into his apartment. It really did not seem logical for one of the main characters to escape his own fate. Anyone could have guessed that Costigan would die simply because he was tied up in the mafia. Everyone who is ever involved with the mob ends up getting himself killed. Even though Costigan was one of the "good guys," he still should have known what he was getting himself into. It can be seen in "The Departed" that everyone who is fraudulent is punished for their actions.
As for me, on of the best scenes of the movie is the very last one. After Sullivan is shot in the back of the head by Dignam, the camera fades away and shows a view through the window of the Boston Police Department. With the department in the background, a rat runs across the windowsill. This is great symbolism in the fact that is characterizes good and evil in the rat and the Boston Police Department. This last scene seems to add a finishing touch that leaves a constant reminder of the differences of both good and evil.