Martin Scorsese's The Departed hits all the high points for an urban crime flick: a twisting, betrayal-filled narrative makes for fantastic gunfights and despicably delicious characters running loose in the big-city sprawl. While it is the slow-to-boil plot that makes (and sometimes breaks) this thriller, it would all be for naught without the actors.
It is thanks to this fantastic acting that the convoluted story is able to break free of relatively uninspired moviemaking and enter the realm of great cinema. Breathing life into already-complex characters, these men and women (what few there are) inhabit a dark, comically morbid world and make it real. As each shot is fired and the body count mounts ever higher, viewers won't be able to help to feel each and every loss. In this, Scorsese shows himself to be a better director than his contemporaries: he has elevated The Departed from blood-soaked obscenity into the realm of artwork.
This film, adapted by William Monahan from the Asian drama Internal Affairs, is, at heart, a tale of two moles. One, fresh-faced Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), is a high-class and charming new inductee into the Boston police department. He is also a long-time devotee of local crime boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) and quickly begins feeding the mob leader insider info. The other spy is Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), straight from the lower end of Boston's class structure (with a short detour into its mother's world of riches and nobility). Attempting to escape a family fraught with petty criminals, he is nonetheless forced into an undercover assignment by the department's resident hard-ass, Dignan (Mark Wahlberg). From there, the two cadets' false lives intertwine as Costigan falls in with Costello's gang, Sullivan keeps the police off of Costello's tail, and both men fall for a troubled police psychiatrist. Things heat up further as both the PD and gang realize spies are in their midst and begin hunting the two men actively.
Given the detailed, circuitous nature of this plot, one would assume that Monahan would have ensured that it always remained at least relatively clear to the viewer. This, however, is not the case, as heavy Boston accents and abrupt time-shifts smother the finer details of the plot in a mire of confusion. As most of the ends are slowly tied together at the conclusion, a bright viewer is able to piece it all together, but most moviegoers will likely want to sit through the film twice to catch everything and realize which subplots are resolved and which are left open.
For the most part, the technical details of the film do nothing to either help or hinder the progression. The music occasionally strikes a chord in the heart of a Bay Stater, but these short appearances by local musicians would be lost on a non-local. For the most part, it swells when needed and lets the action do the talking otherwise. The cinematography, apart from a couple of uncomfortable pinpoint zooms on Sullivan and a clever visual gag involving a rat and the state Capitol at the film's conclusion, is merely serviceable and suitably dark and grainy for the mood of the picture. Colors are muted, reflecting a decaying inner city, but also slightly muddling the proceedings. Apart from some clever (if clichd) shadows masking Costello's grizzly visage at the film's opening, even lighting does little more than exist in the shadow of the story.
The acting, however, often breaks away and becomes noticeable on its own right. While many characters are relatively flat or unnoticeable (Ranging from obscenity-spewing detectives to vaguely foreign, dim-witted mob lackeys), they are played by actors experienced enough to give them life but keep them where they belong: in the background, behind the big players (Costello, Sullivan, and Costigan).
Despite some initial confusion as to the fact that there are, in fact, two cadets being shown in the opening training' montage (Perhaps this was meant as an artistic touch, but it merely comes across as poorly made), DiCaprio and Damon make their characters their own. Damon's Sullivan is sly, quick-witted, and smoother than butter, but it is the carefully laid cracks in his mole-skin that Damon plants that truly make him shine. Watching his throat muscles throb as he whispers violently to Costello with his police-employed fiance mere feet away, a viewer feels the incredible weight bearing down upon Damon. DiCaprio pushes this image of a breaking man even further: by the film's end, he is completely undone. His eyes sweep over the screen wildly and his voice trembles and breaks with nearly every hoarse shout. Though his antics may occasionally come across as melodramatic, given his character's (barely explored) past, his reaction to the violence of mob life does at least make sense.
It is Nicholson, however, who completely steals the show. His Costello is an iron fist in a velvet glove: his silky voice orders death and dismemberment while his charming smile sits above a bloodstained apron. He plays the perfect villain right to his own bloody end, a fantastic mix of cracked madness and over-the-top indulgence. He sits atop a criminal empire not unlike his stack of award-winning films and gloats at both the characters and audience, malevolent yet loveable. Though some view it as an insult, this reviewer says it with the utmost respect: Jack is Jack in The Departed.
That is, of course, what makes this a film worth seeing: while serviceable cinematography hides behind the twisting plot, the actors stand at the forefront, at the tops of their respective games. His ability to cull and shape these performances is what has made Scorsese so well known.