"Honesty is not synonymous with truth..."

Rating: 6/10 (3 November 2007)

Cocky Boston police detective with the Special Investigations Unit--who, as a young man, was mentored by a drug kingpin, an overgrown thug who is still making everyone shake in the old neighborhood--is still in-cahoots with this mob boss and attempts to ferret out the police cadet whose job it was to infiltrate the bad guys' circle and get hired on. In turn, the cadet--who is frustrated by his lack of identity--must find the spy on the police force who is playing both sides. Big Oscar winner from director Martin Scorsese is an Americanization of Hong Kong's "Mou gaan dou" from 2002. It is also very typical of this particular filmmaker: flashy, fast-moving, repugnant and yet reveling in its nastiness--to the point where one nearly feels the rampant ugliness and constant homophobia gets the director's seal of approval. As the undercover cop, Leonardo DiCaprio does some of his finest work yet; although he can't do much with the man-woman stuff involving a perplexing Public Service psychiatrist, DiCaprio is convincingly rough in a very difficult role to pull off. As the bad detective, Matt Damon is also first-rate, bravely playing a real pr*ck while giving the picture a smug swagger that suits the narrative well (I would have preferred more about this character's loss of morals however, which happens entirely off-camera). As the drug-lord, Jack Nicholson performs without vanity and slithers through the movie like a smiling cobra; his unpredictability as an actor is tailor-made for this role, and Scorsese is careful not to overload the screen with Jack (we get just enough of him, although one sequence in a porno theater goes over-the-top). "The Departed" isn't particularly shrewd, and it is not Scorsese's best work, but the linear structure of the complicated plot is nearly free of static and has many gripping scenes. **1/2 from ****