A Knockout

Rating: 10/10 (14 September 2019)

"The Departed" is arguably the greatest cop movie ever made, and certainly one of the best movies of the 2000s - period. What Scorsese did with this movie was masterful: he took a perfectly good crime thriller (the original "Infernal Affairs") and elevated it even higher to become a saga of class, race, betrayal, and "families always rising and falling in America." "The Departed" is one of the most hard-edged, dramatic, and gripping movies that I've ever seen, with a multi-layered story that keeps you coming back to the film again and again. I love the central premise, which takes classic Scorsese tropes like Catholic guilt and ethnic identity and fuses them with true crime history - Frank Costello, after all, is based on Boston's infamous Whitey Bulger.
On a technical level this movie is outstanding: the direction, musical score, and cinematography are amazing - but nothing is more impressive to me than the editing. Thelma Schoonmaker well deserved the Oscar for Best Film Editing on "The Departed," which might not have been half as good if not for Schoomaker's past pacing and experimental style. As always in a Scorsese picture the performances are phenomenal: everyone from Leo DiCaprio to Martin Sheen is on their A-game in this one. Though by far my favorite performance is Jack Nicholson as Costello - he brings together humor, sleaze, and menace simultaneously and it makes for a truly terrifying villain.
The decision to set the film in Boston, where the movie's rich themes are deeply ingrained in the city's history, was brilliant. The casting of real-life Bostonians such as Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg, and the choice of Dorchester's William Monahan as screenwriter, gives "The Departed" an authenticity that many other Boston-set movies lack. After watching this movie again I'll say that I do have a slight problem with the running time - you do sometimes feel the movie's two and a half hour length, and there's a handful of scenes that could either be cut down or removed entirely. But it by no means ruins the viewing experience, in fact despite its length "The Departed" remains endlessly entertaining.
The fact that Scorsese took good material and made it even better is the reason why "The Departed" is perhaps the best remake ever made and certainly one of my favorite crime dramas. 10/10.