Great direction, writing and acting make this one a definite winner

Rating: 8/10 (7 April 2016)

With The Departed, Martin Scorsese does that thing has done so successfully over the years where he takes what would ordinarily be pretty basic genre material and injects it with his particular dynamic style, elevating the resultant movie in the process. This of course was the film where he finally got the Oscar he so obviously craved and while this is certainly not his best film, it's still a very good one indeed. Its set around the Boston organised crime scene and it examines the blurry lines that exist between how the good guys and bad guys go about their business. To this end an undercover agent is sent to infiltrate the Irish Mafia, while in reverse the gangsters send in one of their young affiliates to enrol and work for the police department, with the purpose of reporting back to the gangsters all police activity. Before long their paths gets dangerously intertwined.
Aside from Scorsese's typically energetic and lively direction, this one is notable for its extremely good cast. There are so many top performers that it feels like an ensemble film. Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon play the two undercover men at the heart of the story and both actors offer up multi-dimensional portrayals of their characters. Its top drawer stuff from the two principals and it really helps draw the viewer in but there are so many other top actors putting in high calibre work here that it's impossible to mention them all in proper detail. But suffice to say Jack Nicholson is at his charismatic best in the role of a somewhat unsympathetic and nasty crime boss; Vera Farmiga is luminous and magnetic as a police psychologist who is the object of affections of both undercover men, while Mark Wahlberg puts in an absolutely hilarious turn as a police boss with a decidedly confrontational manner.
This is superior stuff essentially. Despite its many characters and plot avenues, it's so very well written that it is always compelling and involving. Along with the later The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), it showed pretty conclusively that, despite his advancing years, Scorsese was still at the top of his game and had certainly not mellowed with age.