One of the Most Brilliant, Subtle and Compelling Thrillers of the Modern Era

Rating: 9/10 (4 September 2016)

It is not often that one is prompted to describe a thriller as "brilliant," but that description can certainly be applied to THE DEPARTED.
Set in South Boston, "a few years ago," it depicts the struggles between the State Police and an Irish gang led by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) for supremacy of the streets. Such battles are complicated by the known presence of moles within the police force as well as in the gang, but no one - not least the protagonists themselves - knows who they actually are.
This is the bare framework of a plot that engages in complex issues of identity politics. THE DEPARTED is a symbolic title, not only referring to central character Billy's (Leonardo DiCaprio's) loss of personal identity, once he joins the State Police, but prompting speculation on whether other characters in the film suffer an equal loss as well. Billy and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) are conceived as doppelgangers; they dress the same, go out with the same girl (Vera Farminga), and pursue roughly the same existences. Their behaviors are so similar that it becomes difficult to separate them. This is the film's point: corruption is so endemic in South Boston that it is perhaps futile to separate the good from the bad, or to expect those either serving or abusing the law to sustain their identities. They have all become part of the same maelstrom engulfing the city.
It is this condition that helps to explain the complications of the plot. It does not really matter who is doing what, with which, and to whom; the characters are simply struggling to survive in a world that is beyond their comprehension. Even Frank Costello, the gang boss with a cocksure attitude about what he wants to do now and in the future, often seems somewhat lost (even though he conceals his insecurities beneath an arrogant exterior).
The action is perpetually edgy, with no one really trusting in anyone else. Colin is perpetually at loggerheads with his fellow police officer Dignam (Mark Wahlberg), and we never really know for sure which side Queenan (Martin Sheen) is actually on. Police operations are elaborately planned but foiled by the criminals; likewise the criminals seem unable to put their plans into successful operation. It is perhaps because of this lack of success that everyone so distrusts one another.
In the end there is a resolution of sorts, with the protagonists apparently getting their just comeuppances. But Scorsese is keen to underline the ironies of the denouement; just because some people have passed away does not mean that there won't be others ready, willing, and able to fill their places, thereby continuing the corruption in Boston that seems insoluble.
As a comment on dystopian America in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, THE DEPARTED cannot be bettered. A modern classic.