25 years in the making...and worth the wait

Rating: 8/10 (30 October 2007)

In 1981, Martin Scorsese was nominated in the Best Director category for Raging Bull. That he didn't win then was criminal, that it took 25 years for him to get his hands on an Academy award is simply felonious. And so it is perhaps apt that it was The Departed that won it, being arguably his best crime picture to date.
I have just re-watched the epic on DVD, after being blown away in the cinema, and I was struck again by the level of humour it boasts. The film is a masterpiece, as good in my opinion as Goodfellas, Casino or Taxi Driver - if not directly comparable - and a welcome return to form after the trudging blockbusters that were Gangs of New York and The Aviator.
'The Departed', as a title, works on many levels. It refers literally to the numerous deaths in the film, but also reminds us how far 'departed' the main characters of Billy Costigan and Colin Sullivan have become from their original selves.
Costigan (Leonardo di Caprio) and Sullivan (Matt Damon) are, respectively, a cop from the wrong side of the tracks and a choirboy turned crook, acting undercover in each other's organisations. Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) is the mob boss, and Martin Sheen plays Captain Queenan, ably aided by the excellent Mark Wahlberg as Sergeant Dignam.
I could eulogise at length about how much I enjoyed this picture, or explore some of the many themes, from the many religious connections (Nicholson as Costello is the devil incarnate for sure) to the clear juxtaposition of the lives of Costigan and Sullivan (e.g. when the latter is buying a flat or having a date, the former is in jail or in a fight), but instead I would like to focus on the humour.
Productions of this ilk, (and by ilk I include the likes of Donnie Brasco, Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas or The Sopranos), generally succeed where others fail because of the human side to the story. It's all very well having a killer plot, plenty of violence and lots of gangster patter, but if people can't relate to the characters it is unlikely to engage them.
Think of the most memorable scenes from the afore-mentioned films and in your list is likely to be Joe Pesci asking "What do you mean I'm funny?" in Goodfellas, Johnny Depp explaining what "Forget about it" means in Donnie Brasco, "Royale with Cheese" from Pulp Fiction or any number of one-liners in The Sopranos. These jokes, while they would never bring the house down, remind you that these are real people rather than just killers, gangsters or crooks.
And the Departed delivers as well as any of these, whether it's Dignam's insults: "My theory on Feds is that they're like mushrooms, feed 'em sh*t and keep 'em in the dark" and "I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy"; Captain Ellerby's quick-patter: "I'm gonna go have a smoke right now. You want a smoke? You don't smoke, do ya, right? What are ya, one of those fitness freaks, huh? Go f*ck yourself"; or Costello's big-talk: "One of us had to die. With me, it tends to be the other guy." This aspect of the film kept me engaged, and meant that I was alert enough to the action to spot other subtleties, such as the references to "Psycho" and "The Third Man" in the shower scene and at Billy's funeral. One reference though, also I feel the film's weakest point, was more rammed down my throat than slipped into my subconscious. This came right at the end of the film, where the "rat" runs across Sullivan's window. A little too literal I thought.
I probably wouldn't have remembered that had it not been the last scene of the film, and that aside, this is easily the best film I have seen in the cinema in the last decade. It certainly deserves to become in time a classic to be mentioned in the same breath as Scorsese's finest and is fitting to be the one that finally earned him an Oscar, after 26 years of being a bridesmaid.