Sheer Genius

Rating: 10/10 (10 October 2006)

The Departed fuses Scorsese's cine-literate panache with a gleeful lack of pretension that is certain to give him the most commercially-successful film of his career. The Departed is the most full-on, story-driven film that Scorsese has made since his last re-make, Cape Fear, in 1991. Does this signal a dumbing down of the sensibilities of a director now so finally exasperated at his inexplicable inability to garner a Best Director Oscar? Absolutely not, for Scorsese tells stories better than any director in Hollywood. And while the exasperation may be true, this is not a dumbed-down movie. In fact, it may well be the smartest and most engaging film you'll see all year. That it manages to be so while still containing all of Scorsese's staple themes - guilt, redemption, the precariousness of modern masculinity, and the bonds between men - makes it damn near a miraculous piece of work.
The Departed follows two young men in the Massecheusetts (sic) State Police - fast-rising, cocky Sullivan, and wrong-side-of-the-tracks Costigan. Each is picked to be a covert spy, but for opposite sides of the law. Billy is recruited to be an undercover cop with a mission to infiltrate the ring of Boston kingpin Frank Costello; meanwhile, Costello himself has earmarked Sullivan to be his eyes and eyes in the PD since childhood.
The film spans two tumultuous years in their lives as both begin to wilt and crack under the weight of their daily deceptions. When each side is made aware of the other's existence, the race is on for both young men to find the other first...
Such a flimsy summary of the film's premise really doesn't do justice to William Monahan's script, which has taken a taut Cantonese film, Infernal Affairs, and beefed it up so that every character (save the muddle that is Vera Farmiga's police psychiatrist, dating Sullivan, counselling Billy) has quirks, mannerisms, and the suggestion of a third dimension so lacking in most Hollywood films. By adding the element of an ingrained Catholicism of the Boston Irish, Monahan promotes The Departed from the 'competent thriller' to something approaching a modern tragedy.
Damon plays superbly against type as a cocky, near-weasel-like detective who is slowly realising he has been in over his head since the day Jack Nicholson's crime lord first picked him out in a convenience store. Nicholson has never been more enjoyable as a completely racist, misogynistic, thoroughly evil gangland kingpin - such is the glee with which he spouts his (presumably oft-improvised) dialogue that he recalls his performance in such signature films as One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, or The Shining. (Indeed, the film is so dismissive of the current constraints of Hollywood's liberal, PC brigade, that it at times seems a hark-back to the glorious decade in which directors like Scorsese, Coppola, DePalma, Friedkin and Cimino thought big, shot bigger and cared little for box office).
The supporting cast is superb - special mention goes to Alec Baldwin, who continues to prove that he is still one of the most reliable of supporting players in America. British acting living legend Ray Winstone also cuts a memorably fearsome figure as Costello's right hand man, Mr French; although his accent is a little hit and miss, Winstone's undoubted natural hardness make you believe him. As mentioned, Vera Farmiga is a bit lost in the field of Y chromosomes, but Monahan has amalgamated, essentially, THREE female characters from the original film into one, multi-functional, and very questionable female presence. Scorsese doesn't often get women right in his films, and one of the ways he tries to compensate for this is to make them the sort of 'moral anchor' in the film. Farmiga serves this role.
But this film belongs to Leonardo DiCaprio, who has finally found a Scorsese role that plays perfectly to his appearance and strengths. Here, DiCaprio gets to make use of his natural, near-infuriating boyishness, and he has just the right amount of presence now to play young buck in the crime outfit, dominated by heavyweights like Nicholson and Winstone. And, throughout the film, his Billy Costigan is on a downward slope to paranoia and breakdown, a decline that DiCaprio charts with a subtlety that so few of his contemporaries can manage.
But, as with any Scorsese film, the discussion will always centre around him. Not even Spielberg works under the weight of expectation that Scorsese does; and it's a testament to the fact that Coppola has made nothing by rubbish for the last twenty-odd years, and DePalma too, has lost his way, that film lovers still get passionate about his work. I can't imagine too many devotees being disappointed by this film. After two Oscar hunting films, he has finally said, F*** it, and threw his considerable talents behind a balls-to-the-wall thriller that is by turns, Scrosese-esquire and Hitchockian, with bags of mass appeal. Spielberg could have made a 4-star movie of this; David Fincher could have done the script proud. But only Scorsese could walk the commercial and artistic line so deftly, so brilliantly, and leave his peers and pretenders standing.
The Departed is the film of the year, no question. And film lovers everywhere should rejoice at having Martin Scorsese back at the top of his game.