a good film but less compelling than Goodfellas

Rating: 7/10 (22 February 2007)

In Martin Scorcese's "The Departed," Leonardo Di Caprio and Matt Damon play dueling "moles" working at cross purposes on opposite sides of the law. Di Caprio is Billy Costigan, a rookie recruited by the Massachusetts State Police to go undercover to infiltrate the gang headed by Irish mafia boss, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Damon is Colin Sullivan, a seemingly straight-laced detective who, in reality, is a "rat" planted by Costello in the heart of the investigative unit, whose job it is to tip the mob boss off when the cops are getting just a little too close to his unsavory operations.
The film, a remake of the Hong Kong flick "Infernal Affairs," finds Scorcese back in the familiar territory of tough-talking ethnic gangsters (although for once the Italians are let off the hook) and urban violence. In terms of box office receipts and year's-end awards ceremonies, the return trip has certainly paid off handsomely for the director. Yet, for all the accolades it has garnered, "The Departed" falls short of the "Goodfellas" glory of a decade and a half ago for reasons that are not always easy to pinpoint or fathom.
On the positive side, Scorcese, never one to stint on his performers, has gathered a powerhouse cast for the occasion. In addition to Di Caprio and Damon, who provide some of the most solid and subtle work of their careers thus far, the movie boasts Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg in stellar supporting roles. Nicholson does yet another variation of the sardonic, scenery-chewing bad guy he's done countless times before, but since nobody does that shtick better than he, we don't mind watching it yet another time.
The greatest strength of the film lies in the complexity of the storyline, as the parallel cat-and-mouse scenarios continually twist and turn and ultimately dovetail into each other as the movie builds to its frenzied conclusion. There's a near-balletic beauty to much of the plotting as Costigan and Sullivan both struggle with the paranoia and fear that come from having to conceal their true identities from their colleagues at work and the love interest they unknowingly share on the side. One must credit Siu Fai Mak, who wrote the original screenplay - here skillfully adapted by William Monahan - for much of the film's success.
Yet, despite its many virtues of script and performance, there seems to be something oddly lacking in "The Departed" - a kind of unity and focus that turned "Goodfellas" into an instant classic of the gangster film genre. The deliberately clipped editing, which results in abrupt, awkward transitions between individual scenes, gives the film a self-consciously hurdy-gurdy quality that seems more artifice than art. The dialogue is often more mannered than it needs to be, and Scorcese has done surprisingly little to make the Boston locale an integral part of the drama (think back to how Sydney Lumet's managed that feat in "The Verdict"). The story is interesting, in and of itself, but we never find ourselves very deeply engaged in the fate of the characters, which is the last charge one could ever level against "Goodfellas." Moreover, even the violence in "The Departed" is handled much less effectively than it was in "Goodfellas." In the earlier movie, the violence - and even the threat of violence - was cringe-inducing, unsettling and disturbing, with the Joe Pesci character, in particular, keeping the audience in a state of dreaded anticipation throughout, but in "The Departed," the blows land with very little impact, and the violence is really not much different from what one might find in any decently executed, garden variety action film.
Perhaps it's unfair to keep making these constant comparisons to "Goodfellas," a standard that, let's face it, very few directors would ever be able to live up to even on their best day of film-making. It's just that Scorcese set the bar so high, for himself as well as for others, with that film that his own failure to reach it inevitably seeps into our evaluation of his current product.
A good film but not a great one.