Scorcese finally gets his due!

Rating: 10/10 (14 September 2008)

THE DEPARTED is the first Best Picture winner that I've seen in years that I've actually at least LIKED! And I'll go a step further to say that I REALLY, REALLY LIKE it! It is an excellent story, played brilliantly by all involved, and told by one of the greatest directors in all of film history: Martin Scorcese. Scorcese FINALLY won Best Director and a film of his won Best Picture for this modern masterpiece. Of course it's not TAXI DRIVER or RAGING BULL, or even GOODFELLAS, but so what? It's better than 95% of the other stuff thrown at us the last few years! THE DEPARTED stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon as Bostonians Billy Costigan and Colin Sullivan, respectively, both from opposite sides of the track. Costigan's father's side of the family has criminal ties, but he was actually raised apart from that w/ his mother's more uppercrust upstanding side of the family. Sullivan was a poor boy raised in the streets. That's how both characters came to be what they were as grown men: Billy was brought up away from crime and Colin was exposed directly to it. As a boy Colin unwittingly became involved with local crime boss Frank Costello (played by the great Jack Nicholson in typical scene-stealing fashion). Costigan and Sullivan both joined the police academy, with Costigan volunteering to go under deep cover to help take down Costello's organization, while Sullivan worked as Costello's inside man/mole to notify him when the cops were closing in on him.
Costigan's only link to the cops is career cop Captain Queenan (Mr. Martin Sheen in terrific form) and his right hand man Lt. Dignam (Best Supporting Actor nominee Mark Wahlberg in a superb performance). Dignam and Queenan are the ONLY cops who know that Costigan is really one of the good guys as it was set up so that Billy would get thrown out of the police academy and thrown in jail for 18 months to help solidify his cover. Upon release from prison, Billy connects with his father's bad side of the family in order to ultimately get close to the PRIZE, Frank Costello himself.
Meanwhile, the 'clean-cut' Sullivan ingratiates himself with the Boston PD's bigwigs, in particular, he is assigned to work with a task force led by Lt. Ellerby (played by the superb Alec Baldwin). Ellerby and Sullivan's job is to take Costello down. Very labyrinthine! The cop tasked to destroy Costello is really Costello's boy (Sullivan) and Costello's new boy in his organization is really a cop truly trying to take him down (Costigan)! The irony! Thankfully, this juicy main plot doesn't fail to deliver the goods. It is very tense, exciting, edge-of-your-seat stuff. You really hold your breath at times wondering what's going to happen. To complicate matters, obviously, neither Costigan nor Sullivan know each other, but both men know that the other EXISTS. Costigan knows that Costello has a police mole and Sullivan knows that the cops have a plant inside Costello's organization, so during the course of the film, they try to root each other out. To FURTHER complicate the proceedings, both men become involved with the SAME woman, a police psychiatrist Madolyn (played by the alluring Vera Farmiga). Sullivan meets her because they work in the same building and Costigan is one of her patients.
Wow! What a cast! What a film! And very well told. I was never a big fan of DiCaprio's until I saw him in this film. He really delivers the goods as Billy, a tortured soul who begins to blur the line between right and wrong. And Damon is truly solid as Colin, a tragic, doomed individual who sadly got influenced by the wrong person in his formative years. Nicholson of course delivers with his flash, flair, and aplomb. And the rest of the cast is solid beyond words.
Scorcese has fashioned a classic for the modern viewer, his best film since GOODFELLAS. This BEST PICTURE winner is a keeper! 'Bout damn time!