Humor and Playful Touch Save Scorcese's Latest from Tedium

Rating: 7/10 (8 October 2006)

As an English teacher, whenever I had students write short stories in class the boys would always end them the exact same way: total mayhem where everyone gets killed. There is something juvenile about killing off all of your characters to tie up a film. Scorcese is known for that; in fact, you could say it's his signature. From Taxi Driver to Goodfellas, his film's resolve themselves in explosions of violence. Just like my fifteen year old students' stories. But my students worked under time constraints (50 minutes), they were writing in a foreign language, and they're fifteen. For a professional filmmaker such a hackneyed means of tying up a story demonstrates an unfortunate dearth of creativity. Nevertheless, The Departed's script, some fine performances, and some restrained direction from Scorcese distinguishes the auteur's latest cops and gangsters film from the myriad others he's directed.
Scorcese certainly lacks subtlety. And he holds steadfast to familiar themes: organized crime, pervasive corruption, anti-social hypermachismo, and of course, purgation through violence. The Departed certainly has all that. It revolves around an undercover cop who's infiltrated organized crime in Boston, and a mole for organized crime entrenched in the state police department. While the police probe their own department to find the mole, the Irish gangsters try to smoke out the rat among them. The dialogue is a Mametian pitter-patter of obscenities and insults spewed forth like high school poseurs trying to impress upperclassmen. It's all tough talk. Until all the tension and wrath culminate in a fiasco of gunfire and instantaneous death (I've never seen so many clean shots to the head before).
Still, the dialoguebut not the story, with its gut-wrenching yet trite endingis the film's saving grace. The Departed's all-star cast fire off snappy one-liners like rounds from their Kalashnikov's. "Who am I? I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other one" barks Mark Walburgh to an impudent but incompetent video technician. When Vera Farmiga tries to give a flirtatious Matt Damon her business card so they can meet for lunch, Damon's smart-ass reply is "No thanks. I'll find you. I'm a detective. Just kidding. I need the card." In spite of all of the mayhem and macho posturing, the film has a breezy sense of humor that eases the tension. And to his credit, Scorcese handles it well. Unlike his previous two efforts, The Departed never gets too heavy-handed or brooding. Also, certain much-needed playfulness in the performances keeps the movie flowing smoothly. Thankfully, Scorcese doesn't indulge in any forehead grasping moodiness that might've halted the show dead in its tracks. He gamely keeps the tension and humor brisk throughout.
And the performances of the all-star cast are nuanced and subtle. In a nice touch while Farminga keeps the pahk the cah on hahvahd yahd accent under leash for most scenes, she lets it loose when she gets emotional. And still more credit goes to screenwriter William Monohan for drawing distinctly similar yet discrete characters.
The film could just use a more interesting, perhaps less bloody ending. If he had that, it could've been one of Scorcese's more distinguishable films. Instead, it's just a furiously entertaining one.