The Departed

Rats everywhere. That seems to be what Martin Scorsese’s 2006 Best Picture-winning film The Departed seems to be saying. We get that message hit over our head with the infamous final shot, and we spend nearly 2 1/2 hours of drama about the criminal underworld, undercover cops, and police corruption just to further emphasize that theme. No one is innocent; all are guilty of something, and the blood flows as only Scorsese knows how.

After years and years of Martin Scorsese coming close to winning the Oscar, it finally happened with The Departed. Looking back on it after nearly twenty years, I have to wonder if this was a make-do for things like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, both Best Picture contenders that failed to gain enough votes to get the win. Raging Bull could also be thrown into that mix. Scorsese has made many films that stand the test of time, some better than the films that beat them, yet he always seemed to stumble at the finish line. Can we really look at Ordinary People and say it is honestly better than Raging Bull? And in the years since, while he has been nominated again, he is once again getting blanked. It makes it feel like 2006 was the year the Academy threw him a bone, celebrating his work in general and not The Departed specifically.

That’s not to say that The Departed isn’t worthy of the win. In its way, it is just as good as Goodfellasand Raging Bull. It’s packed to the gills with some amazing performances—Jack Nicholson is a particular standout chewing the scenery as only he can— and it is endlessly entertaining to boot. There are layers upon layers of morally grey motivations all around and characters that are so cagey you aren’t sure what they will do at times until it actually happens. It also only secured five Oscar nominations, amongst the lowest number for a film that won Best Picture in a long time. Yet it was considered the front runner that year, as if people knew this was finally going to be Scorsese’s year.

We open in the 1980s with Irish mob boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) introducing himself to a young Colin Sullivan, offering him a job. As the years go by, Sullivan (Matt Damon) has been groomed as a spy inside the Massachusetts State Police, joining the Special Investigation Unit. Another Police Academy recruit, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), has been singled out by Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) to go undercover as a criminal to infiltrate Costello’s crew. 

The story follows all these characters as Costigan gathers evidence, Sullivan tries to ferret out the undercover rat, Costello’s men steal military-grade hardware to sell to the Chinese, and many people get killed along the way. As Costello gets more worried about who could be the rat in his basement, he grows less trustful of his own inside man, Sullivan. Sullivan, meanwhile, promotes up and tries to strong-arm Dignam into giving him the identity of the inside man. This prompts Dignam to walk off the job rather than give that information up. Everything starts to crumble as alliances are strained, people get murdered, and revelations come to light.

This is not an overly complicated story, yet it feels like more is happening than actually is. That is the brilliance of this Academy Award-winning script penned by William Monahan, a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs.  It takes a basic plot and fills it with so much intrigue, so much detail, and a great deal of tension that it feels more complicated than it is. Boiled down, it’s about an illegal business deal involving stolen technology and two undercover men, one on each side, trying to influence the final outcome. 

Usually, in this type of film, both sides would be dedicated to their cause to the bitter end, but this film is smarter than that. Costigan is feeling a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, protective towards the very man he is charged with betraying. Sullivan, who has spent most of his life in the service of Costello, eventually decides to betray his father figure, even putting himself on the other side of the gun that kills him. Both men are sleeping with the same woman, Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), a psychologist whom Sullivan is dating and whom Costigan has been court-ordered to visit. Virtually everybody is betraying everybody in some way. Even Queenan is using his position as one of the only men who knows that Costigan is really a cop to force Costigan to stay undercover. 

Infernal Affairs is an amazing film in its own right, making it almost unnecessary to remake it. But Scorsese is a smarter director than to just simply remake the film. He has firmly made this a Scorsesefilm, Americanizing the story while staying true to the roots. By setting it in Boston, rather than the more clichéd New York or Vegas settings of most mob movies helps distinguish this film from others of its ilk. It also means that most of the cast has to affect a Boston accent which works to greater or lesser degrees. Damon, of course, is from the area and comes across best, while Vera’s is just plain distracting. Some of the other actors wisely choose not to even try.

By the very nature of how this story is written, there are no heroes here, no one we can really root for. Instead, there are degrees of grey. What that ultimately means when we get to the climax is that there will be a lot of shocking twists, and characters we thought were safe will be taken out nonchalantly. This was the case in the Hong Kong film, too, where it was equally abrupt and violent. The only one of the leads who gets a great and prolonged death is Costello, perhaps because even Scorsese didn’t feel that an actor like Jack Nicholson merited a quick bullet to the head. No one is safe here.

If you are familiar with Martin Scorsese’s films, you’ll have a decent idea of what you are in for with The Departed. It’s violent, cold, profane, and sometimes funny in a gallows kind of way. It has layers upon layers of character motivations and moral ambiguity, too. This may not be Scorsese’s best film, but it is the one that finally got the Academy to pony up and reward him as a filmmaker. This is a tremendously made film that nails the locale, the characters, and the dangers of going undercover, as well as the pitfalls. It was his year to secure the Best Picture, and it was well deserved. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Graham King (won)

Best Director: Martin Scorsese (won)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role: Mark Wahlberg

Best Adapted Screenplay: William Monahan (won)

Best Film Editing: Thelma Schoonmaker (won)

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Release Date: October 6, 2006

Running Time: 151 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, and Alec Baldwin

Directed by: Martin Scorsese