The Renaissance

Rating: 10/10 (9 October 2006)

Martin Scorsese has reached a point in his career where he has free reign to do whatever he wishes as a director. It's hallowed ground for an auteur, and as such, every actor worth his salt would kill to work for him knowing full well that whatever Scorsese chooses to do will be an uncompromising work of art. With "The Departed" he has quite possibly one of the greatest casts ever assembled. The deliciously convoluted plot based on the recent Asian flick "Infernal Affairs" showcases Jack Nicholson as an Irish mob boss; Leonardo DiCaprio as an undercover cop infiltrating the crime ring; Matt Damon as the crime ring's inside man with the police unit assigned to bring them down; Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, and Mark Wahlberg as the cops working above Damon and DiCaprio; and a breakthrough role for Vera Farmiga as a police psychiatrist in a love triangle with Damon and DiCaprio. This brief but confusing rundown is merely the tip of the iceberg and reveals nothing of the plot twists and tension riddling every aspect of the film like bullet holes from a machine gun massacre.
By now, Scorsese is to crime dramas what Hitchcock was to psychological thrillers. Comparatively, he's at the same point in his long career Hitchcock was when he gave us "Rear Window," "Psycho," and "Vertigo." Scorsese could've directed this blindfolded and it would've still been first rate. What's so thrilling about Scorsese as a filmmaker is that he's always directing full throttle with his eyes wide open. "The Departed" is so ridiculously good it left me with chills afterward. After a brief departure to big budget Oscar pushes with "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator," Scorsese returns to the familiar ground of his most revered projects like "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," Goodfellas," and "Casino." All his hallmarks are here: fantastic use of music, brilliantly choreographed bouts of violence, heart-pounding editing, deep and meaningful camera shots and movement, religious iconography, an epic and detailed sense of place (in this case, Boston), and highly quotable dialogue that is dramatic and funny and full of pathos in all the right places.
With its rising tension and cat-and-mouse theatrics, "The Departed" is easily the most viscerally thrilling studio film to come down the pike in many moons. Scorsese doesn't just treat us to his usual bag of tricks, he re-imagines them, and in exorcising perfectly balanced performances from an amazingly talented cast that in the hands of lesser director may have gone over-the-top, he delivers a modern day tragedy on par with greatest works of Shakespeare. For Scorsese, the big screen is his canvas, the camera his paint brush, and the blood splattered across the screen his awe-inspiring brush strokes. He's a veteran, he's a master, and "The Departed" is his Renaissance.