THE DEPARTED (R) ****

 

Directed by Martin Scorsese. 150 minutes.

Starring Leonard DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Anderson and Ray Winstone. Released by Warner Brothers Pictures.

 

It’s hard to tell the crooks from the good guys in Martin Scorsese’s phenomenal gangsters and cops thriller The Departed. As Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) explains the difference between police officers and criminals, “When you’re staring down the barrel of a gun – what’s the difference?” The film is a remake, of sorts, of the 2004 Hong Kong actioner Infernal Affairs, which starred Andy Lau and Tony Leung as a cop who infiltrates a violent crime organization and a member of the criminal enterprise who infiltrates the police force, respectively. While the original film mostly centers on plot and style, Scorsese expands the story into an epic, but bleak meditation on the criminal justice system.

 

In the film, Leonardo DiCaprio fills in for Lau and Matt Damon for Leung, and the rest of the cast plays out like a who’s who of great supporting actors – Ray Winstone, Alec Baldwin, an especially funny Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Vera Farmiga and, oh yeah, Nicholson, who opens the film with a great monologue that will set up the mood for the story. Costello recalls a 1970s bus strike initiated by black residents of Boston – where the story is set. He describes the criminal layout of the city, describing where the Italians have taken over and how the luck of the Irish has run out. Costello says the only way to earn something for yourself is to take it. He passes this lesson on to Colin Sullivan (Damon), whom we first meet as the child of an acquaintance of Costello. The gangster decides to take the kid in, buying him comics and groceries and schooling him in the criminal lifestyle. We flash forward and Damon is finishing up his training to be a Massachusetts State Trooper in order to act as a mole for Costello.

 

On the other hand, while Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) is struggling through the police academy, we learn his family made up part of Boston’s Irish crime family, but he has decided to make good by becoming an officer. He is told by police captains Sheen, who acts as a father figure, and Wahlberg that he will go under cover in Costello’s crew. Although the film follows the storyline of Infernal Affairs, the story of the two moles is not necessarily the main thrust of Scorsese’s film.

 

In The Departed, it is not difficult to draw the line where the criminals end and the law begins – it is damn near impossible. “This is a nation of crooks,” Ray Winstone’s Mr. French tells Costello as the drive to a drug deal. In the film, the cops not only have people on the inside of criminal organizations, but the criminals have their people in the police force and the FBI. One character in the film whom we think is being investigated actually turns out to be an informant, unbeknownst to most of the law enforcement agencies. Scorsese adds a clever closing shot in which a symbolic animal scurries across the screen while the capitol building in Boston looms in the background. In his bleak view of the criminal justice system, Scorsese hints that there are crooks all the way up the ladder of power.

 

The cast here is top notch. Nicholson, one of our great actors, often ends up playing himself, especially in recent years, but still manages to give great performances. Here, there is no arching of the eyebrows, no smirks and no trademark Jackisms. Nicholson puts a new face on evil, whether its shooting a woman in the back of the head by the harbor in Boston and commenting that she “fell wrong” or asking an underage girl if she has received her period yet, Jack gives a spectacular performance as Costello. Just watch the scene where he accuses DiCaprio of being a rat by scrunching up his face and making squeaking noises. It is a scene difficult to play without falling into self parody mode, but Costello is never seen as anything less than menacing.

 

DiCaprio and Damon also do strong work here. Both characters have to alternate between who they really are and whom they are pretending to be, but do so with ease. Baldwin and Wahlberg both bring a sense of humor to the film and give their supporting characters more than one dimension. Vera Farmiga, who stunned critics in Down to the Bone, proves she can hold her own around all of the testosterone on display here and Martin Sheen also takes a smaller character and gives him a strong identity.

 

Scorsese is back in old territory with The Departed. The director tended to steer clear of the gangster genre – one which has brought him much acclaim through films such as Goodfellas, Mean Streets and Casino, most likely because he did not want to be pigeonholed; though I doubt any critic who has scene Scorsese’s entire body of work would not be foolish enough to do that. The Departed recalls the grittiness of Scorsese’s earlier work and a style - in terms of camera work, editing and music use – similar to Goodfellas. He has just replaced the mean streets of New York with those of Boston, but this is the Scorsese we have known and loved for years. There are few directors that can capture you from the moment the first image of their film comes on screen and can hold you in thrall, in this case, for two and a half hours.

 

The Departed is a gritty, bleak but breathtaking crime thriller. In line with the best of its type, the film is not only sucks you in through its narrative, characters, setting and violence, but also through the director’s ability to tie the story into the modern world around us. Scorsese gives us a vision of a failing system that is being corroded from within and hints that the problem could go higher and higher, all the way to the top. This is one of the year’s best films by far.