Years ago we had the church.

Rating: 8/10 (11 January 2018)

"I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me." So growls Frank Costello, king mobster of Boston. He has more words of wisdom for those looking to make it in the big city, "If you want something, you have to take it." The veins of masculinity, morality and identity run strongly through The Departed, as in many a Scorsese movie. But the latter line is actually pilfered from the Buddhist-steeped crime flick from Hong Kong, Infernal Affairs, uttered by Andrew Lau as he shoots the original Costello and ties up all loose ends. He has emerged with his ideal life, taken it with his bare hands, years and years of luxury and rising through the police ranks making this decision for him. When Damon offs his own Costello, it's channeled through impotent rage and betrayal. The gilded State House dome that his apartment overlooks (a rather obvious motif) suddenly isn't so glittery after all. It speaks to the inconsistency of his motivations; how honourable can he be to the state when he was the rat all along? Or has he been lying to himself this whole time? He wants to have his cake and eat it too.
You understand the appeal of a father figure like Costello to a 12 year old boy (wow, magazines!), who can have anything in the palm of his hand in an instant, although the character quickly sheds this mysticism in place for for an almost parody of the unpredictable, unstable gangster. The approach made sense in Burton's gothic web of shadows in Batman, where he rose to the challenge of the iconic comic book villain with a deranged mania, never quite telegraphing his actions to the audience. You couldn't guess whether his gun would sprout flowers or fire bullets. But it sticks out like a sore thumb in the gritty Irish Catholic world of Scorsese's Boston, every gesture a flourish, every threat underlined with a creepy grin. Hokey props reinforce it; a severed hand in a ziplock bag, and one of Nicholson's ideas (you wouldn't say no to a screen legend, would you?), a plastic dildo in a grimy porno theatre. Yes, these men sublimate violence for sex and vice versa, use one or the other as an outlet for their desires in the incestuous criminal underworld, but then along comes Nicholson to deflate the whole thing.
The same can be said for Wahlberg's Dignam, himself accounting for half of the film's allotted profanity count, and in the end existing for little more than the plot's fail-safe (the deleted of Billy's file and identity lacks the original's gut punch for this very reason). Madolyn gets a better rap. Combining two paper-thin love interests into one, she further presses the issue of masculinity and impotence, serving as a foil to the mirrored leads in a tangled triangle. Notice that every facet of her and Sullivan's relationship revolves around humour and surface intimacy, how they'll be one step away from a serious conversation but hastily backtrack (usually into bed).
Schoonmaker edits with a knotty, choppy precision, throwing in flashes of canted action and inverted angles, pilling on smash cut upon smash cut to stimulate urgency, bringing the camera rushing towards its subject before abruptly veering away. Its rhythm and intensity are palpable, drawing attention to the menace that underlines each encounter in the mobster world. See how she cuts the first phone call between the two leads. Not a single word is uttered - the tension is crafted from how she stages the pauses, the silence, the agony of hesitation. Will he answer, and will it mean his downfall?
Scorsese's style makes the original Infernal Affairs look like a soap opera in comparison, and sometimes it's precisely that; slow motion, black and white flashbacks, mournful music. The claustrophobia of the Hong Kong setting could have used some of the remake's grit and paranoia.
Costigan and Sullivan mirror each other, are two sides of the same coin. That much is obvious. The original script explored this further, and had none of the satisfaction or lasting finality of Scorsese's ending. Lau is doomed to perpetual hell, forever tortured by the path he took and the sins committed that led him to this point. Suppose you live and breath as a cop for 10 years, speaking and acting as if you were the good guy (and telling yourself that everyday). Would you eventually believe the same? Scorsese eliminates this option, makes Sullivan a product of his own unique environment, and then rips it all away from him in one go. He doesn't need to be shot. In the end, his entire world has been built by lies. You'd almost prefer to go the way of Costigan.