Martin Scorsese's overdue Best Director Oscar winner.

Rating: 10/10 (30 September 2016)

The Departed has made an impact on modern cinema since it came out in 2006, but I agree with critics of the time saying that Scorsese deserved to win Best Director not only for this, but also for the likes of Raging Bull and Goodfellas. Scorsese won big for this masterpiece and deservedly so: it's an entertaining and tense crime film that shows the ugly sides of both the police force and the criminal underworld; and how it can get unbelievably crazy.
If there was ONE thing this film deserved to win at the Oscars, but didn't get nominated for, was Leonardo DiCaprio's performance as undercover cop Billy Costigan; this performance gave us a goodhearted man having to dive into an Irish-American thug-life that makes living a double-life as a cop and criminal truly difficult.
Scorsese can do crime films like no one else can, and ten years on, The Departed still shows his many strengths as one of the greatest film directors ever to bless the cinema.