Brilliant!

Rating: 8/10 (8 October 2006)

What an amazing film The Departed is! The story is so riveting it's almost Shakespearean, and if this film is an adaptation of a Chinese film, it is nevertheless all American. Screenwriter William Monahan has breathed the essence of Irish-Catholic South Boston grit into it. A magnificent achievement.
And the actors! They are uniformly marvelous. Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and Mark Wahlburg are perfect as plain-clothes detectives of the Massachusetts State Police, and Ray Winstone is wonderfully cast as the criminal chief's right hand man. As anyone will know who has seen the excellent Aussie film The Proposition, Winstone is an actor's actor. All of these actors get better year by year. How great it is to see actors of this quality achieving higher and higher artistry. The character actors of the Irish gang are outstanding, too, radiating extreme menace beneath that natural Irish charm.
Vera Farmiga's performance is, in my opinion, worthy of an Oscar. Playing a state psychologist who falls under the spell of both Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon she is radiates vulnerability and intelligence. When she is in a scene with either of those men all eyes are on HER.
The leads in this film, Jack Nicholson, DiCaprio, and Damon demonstrate that a film of this great quality can accommodate all three of these immensely talented actors. These review pages will be full of well-deserved praise for all three of them, but forget anything you read about Nicholson chewing the carpet. He is perfect: he is the boss, what he says goes, and he leaves no one in any doubt about that. No other actor could have brought his level of passion, intensity, and - yes - humor to the part. Director Martin Scorsese was right to let Jack run with the role. It will rank up there with - and possibly exceed - even the work of Brando and De Niro.
Damon and DiCaprio reach new heights in their performances. They've always been very, very good, but now they're both verging on greatness. They don't deserve to be lumped together, but when they're roles are so similar - the two faces of Janus - one can't help but remark on how similar their accomplishments are in this film. The intense, crusading Irishman of DiCaprio versus the glib, charming, shape-shifting hypocrisy of Damon. Two halves of the same Irish-Catholic coin. And we are the richer for it.
I know nothing about directing, but if it's Scorsese who's brought all this together and who's created what is bound to be a classic American film then he will truly deserve every accolade he gets for this fantastic film. Like Woody Allen, maybe Scorsese is too "New York" for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but no one has ever deserved an Academy Award for a film more than Martin Scorsese does for The Departed.