...it's nice to see the director back in stride with 2006's The Departed.
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Well, there's no criticizing this one. Not only is the movie good, but the already fine standard-definition DVD audio and video qualities are even better in high definition. Having the SD and HD versions back-to-back on a single HD-DVD and DVD Combo makes a good thing even better.
Let me begin the film part of the review by saying I wasn't as impressed as a lot of critics were by Martin Scorsese's last two pictures, "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator." I thought they had more style than substance to them. Therefore, it's nice to see the director back in stride with 2006's "The Departed," a film that put Scorsese back on the mean streets he handles so well.
"When I was your age, they would say we could become cops or criminals. What I'm saying to you is this: When you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?" --Jack Nicholson, "The Departed"
Screenwriter William Monahan based "The Departed" in part on directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's 2002 Hong Kong crime thriller, "Infernal Affairs" ("Wu Jian Dao"), which I suggested at the time might be Hong Kong's answer to Michael Mann's 1995 crime spree, "Heat." Both films were psychological dramas with some elements of action, rather than outright action flicks; both films explored the nature of good and evil, pitting nontraditional good guys and bad guys against one another; and both films featured star players in the title roles. Both films offered gritty, no-nonsense approaches to the traditional cops-and-robbers genre, and if you liked one, you might like the other.
Going a step further, Monahan transferred the Hong Kong setting of "Infernal Affairs" to Boston and incorporated elements of the real-life gangster, Whitey Bulger, a Boston hoodlum still at large, into the script. More about that in the "Extras" department below.
The result of all this is that the viewer has three such crime dramas to choose from: "Heat," "Infernal Affairs," and "The Departed." Never mind that I still think "Heat" surpasses the other two; they are all worth one's while, and it's "The Departed" that has been collecting all the awards.
One other comment in passing: I continue to harp on titles. I thought the international title "Infernal Affairs," a play on "Internal Affairs" investigations, sounded corny and might have suggested a comedy to potential viewers. Likewise, I think "The Departed" is an unfortunate title, suggesting perhaps a humous film about the funeral business (as in "The Loved One"). Those minor details aside, "The Departed" offers a tough, suspenseful, no-nonsense, if overlong look at the inner workings of crime mobs and the police out to stop them.
Yes, for me the movie is too long. The film's 151-minute length reminded me of what Peter Jackson did with "King Kong." Scorsese and Jackson include virtually the same plot and the same scenes in their respective films as in the films they're based on, yet both directors expand them by half or more. Longer is not necessarily better, and quantity does not always equal quality. The dialogue in "The Departed" sometimes runs along so far as to exhaust a person. Among the disc's extras, Scorsese shows us about nineteen minutes of footage he deleted; he probably could have cut another nineteen minutes, and no one would have noticed.
Anyway, what we've got in "The Departed" is a cat-and-mouse game where it is never too clear who is the cat and who is the mouse; nor is it clear with which character we are supposed to identify. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Billy Costigan, a young man from a gangster family who is himself clean, joins the police, and goes undercover to infiltrate Boston's criminal mob. Matt Damon costars as Colin Sullivan, a young man from a straight-arrow family who is working for the mob to infiltrate the police force. Now, is it the police mole in the criminal organization or the criminal mole in the police operation with whom we're supposed to sympathize? I mean, both men are up to their eyeballs in murder and corruption. And which of them is going to catch on to the other one first?
The gimmick in "The Departed" is the same as in "Infernal Affairs": The two moles (or "rats," as the movie calls them) are themselves both officers who went to the same police academy. They are two men of about the same age and the same generation, one ostensibly "good," the other outwardly "bad." Yet both men, the undercover cop working within the gang and the gang member working within the police, feel the pressure of what they're doing. Neither man is comfortable in his position; neither man likes what he is becoming.
Therefore, this is not your usual good guy vs. bad guy yarn. It's really a psychological drama about the good and evil in each of us and how different people cope with the dichotomy. I enjoyed "The Departed" as much as "Infernal Affairs" for being intense and for its not pulling any punches. Scorsese uses practically the same ending as "Infernal Affairs," rather than going for a soft, Hollywood finish.
Then, there is Jack Nicholson, who upstages everybody in the picture. Well, what did you expect? Whereas he is less a caricature here than he has been in some recent pictures, he is still Nicholson. It's just not a charming Nicholson. It's Nicholson with some of the old edge to him, playing a truly despicable, thoroughly evil mob boss who has controlled the city for years. But I wonder about his name in the story, Frank Costello. He's supposed to be an Irish mobster, after all, so why does he have so non-Irish a name as Costello? Yes, I know there are probably thousands of Costellos in Ireland, but that's not the point. Would Scorsese have named an Italian gangster "O'Malley"? Besides that, there really was an Italian mobster named Frank Costello, a powerful New York crime-family boss for decades. Was Scorsese purposely trying to draw our attention to this other, real-life character? If so, for what reason?
Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon do their best to match Nicholson, but in terms of pure screen presence, it's no contest. In supporting roles, Mark Wahlberg is terrific, as are Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Alec Baldwin, and Vera Farmiga, these folks almost stealing the picture from the three leads. What we have, then, is fine ensemble acting all the way around, making for an engrossing film.
Which is not to say that Scorsese doesn't overindulge himself from time to time, as the movie's length attests. For example, the film's closing shot might have worked better had it been less obvious and had the director not lingered over it so long. Ditto for several death scenes and a whole lot of conversations. Oh, well....
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