Actors act; stars shine; Nicholson burns a hole in the screen.

Rating: 8/10 (15 October 2006)

There are things wrong with 'The Departed' - mostly in the last ten minutes. Before that, however, there many fabulous performances, and there is Frank Costello: the most sleazy, loathsome scumbag of a crime-lord to hit the screen, possibly ever. Others have suggested that Nicholson is giving a mannered, unbelievable performance: maybe it is, but it is also a performance that leaves an indelible impression and which is given wings by a script that has his sewer-mouth gush endless cynical degrading filth until he is silenced with an expletive and a bloody fall into a digger's scoop. No doubt it may be accused of being written for shock value, but it isn't. The script embodies the values of someone who does what he does for the worst of reasons: he isn't even greedy, it's a life he chooses in perpetuity because he loves it. Nicholson's performance is a tour de force precisely because the physical embodiment of threat that we might expect is reduced to a portrayal of a very 'ordinary' old guy whose soul is so rotten that he corrupts everything he comes into contact with.
Martin Scorcese and his entire cast and crew have delivered a stunning visceral movie. It would be hard to imagine the film working as well without its very singular villain and it just proves that Nicholson is still 'the man'.