"...Do you lie?"

Rating: 10/10 (6 October 2006)

The Departed is the most entertaining kind of non-stop, intense crime thriller of the year, maybe in the past few years. Some critics have said that it's the best film that director Martin Scorsese has made since Goodfellas. I understand where the compliment comes from, though I slightly resent the subtle criticism in the charge as well, meaning that Scorsese hasn't made a film as great or powerful or entertaining in over fifteen years. I would even go far as saying this is Scorsese's best since, well, Scorsese's last film, or at least since Gangs of New York. Some may forget, or maybe just not really take in, how consistently strong Scorsese's career has been overall, how he keeps on taking chances and still keeping his style so instictually 'cinematic' (he is possibly the biggest "film-geek" ever), so distinctive, and even so fresh in the 21st century, that his is a career akin to the likes of Kurosawa (many masterpieces, and otherwise very good to excellent efforts). The difference though this time from some of his previous outings- and this is perhaps the correlation with Goodfellas besides the obvious of genre linking- is that it's pure, devilish fun, it goes by quickly but supremely satisfyingly over what doesn't really feel like 2 1/2 hours, and it's cast is uniformly good.
Leonardo Di Caprio in particular is so impressive here- and this may be the first-viewing-buzz talking, it might be my favorite of all the performances I've seen him in up till now. Under Scorsese these past several years he's kind of grown up more and more from the oddly pubescent look to him even in his 20's. His performance as Costigan is often very ferocious and tough, but he also makes it a fully rounded character, one that he makes very much his own. He has a dark past, almost too dark to even be an informant for the Boston PD. His whole family is messed up, and there were even links to Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). So, what better way then to send Costigan into Costello's wing and see what comes out? Then the flip-side comes with Matt Damon's Colin, who infiltrates the police department in legitimate fashion. Damon's is the flip-side as well in performance quality to Di Caprio; while Di Caprio, even when lying through his teeth, is truthful to the bone and always believable, Damon is pitch perfect as a bold-faced liar, as he never flinches for a moment, even when caught like a deer in the headlights.
And the performances end up making a sort of square, with Damon and Di Caprio in their own corners, the bulk of the excellent supporting players (Martin Sheen, Marky-Mark Wahlberg, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga in a breakthrough role) on one, and Jack Nicholson all on his own. That was the first thing about hearing of the Departed that had me psyched, knowing that one of the great stars/actors of the past 40 years was teaming up with someone with a stature and track record like Scorsese's. With Nicholson in the role Frank Costello is at first already a character to feel is the 'man' in the room when he walks in and talks. But as far as performance goes, it's vintage Nicholson all the way, digging into it with the style, vigor, wit, charm, and all that and a bag of shark-grin chips that have made Nicholson so remarkable. His is such a dastardly character that it teeters on becoming self-parody, but both director and actor know how to reel the part in to being someone to fear, while also being someone who's a helluva lot of fun. It's worthy of an Oscar nomination, and not just because it's Nicholson in a movie.
As for the director and his crew, they have assembled what could be by the bare essentials nothing more than a genre film with a premise that seems a little cooked-up. But, of course, it is a remake of a trilogy of Hong-Kong police pictures, so that may be why the premise and story feels not completely original, even as it's passing itself off as one. Yet that too didn't detract. If anything, I felt as if Scorsese was doing what very few filmmakers working today- particularly this year if you look at what's come out- don't do, which is to take material, and not just do a simple 'remake', but to do a re imaging, a refashioning, a full-on reinterpretation into the deeper aspects, in this case the morality and sense of loss among all of these characters. There's some religious bits put in, as it IS Scorsese after all, but this time there isn't something like in Mean Streets where it's always there in the background. Here the characters are on, like in Goodfellas, a version of hell, where things all do come to a head; the last thirty minutes had me laughing, cringing, and mouth-agape in equal measures.
In other words, go see this film, if you think it might be up your alley, and you think you were burned by Scorsese ever since he left behind modern-time crime pictures ten years ago.