The ugly side of competition: one stab in the back produces another

Rating: 8/10 (10 July 2007)

Some people just want to relate to others as human beings. Others want their place in the hierarchy of power. DiCaprio plays the former, while Nicholson plays the latter. There are no winners in these bleak lives, but there are plenty of rats in the race.
With his fine sense of music, Scorsese continues to place the right songs in the most appropriate places in "The Departed". With the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" in the background, he introduces his king rat, Costello, and as Jack gives his audience his best seductive smile, the lyrical aftermath of "Sympathy for the Devil" can almost be heard to begin its refrain in your brain. It's those kinds of touches which make "The Departed" an excellent film, a film where, "every cop's a criminal and all the sinners, saints." As heads is tails, just call Jack, Lucifer, as I believe this film explains.
But what would Lucifer be without his collaborators. Nothing. He needs them for his power and they need him in order to taste and smell same. They kneel and he arbitrarily and capriciously dispenses death.
This is not a nice movie about nice people. It is a kind of "immoralty play", where love is always taking a back seat to death. In this sense, "The Departed" continues Scorsese's fine tradition of exposing the criminal mind and milieu which began with "Mean Streets".