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Now that he has finally been caught, Whitey Bulger’s most lasting influence may be the way he set the tone for Boston’s pop-culture since the 1970s, most noticeably in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. For all his New York love, Scorsese depicts Boston more accurately than any other director, from the race riots perpetuated by the Busing Crisis to the gold-chains and baggy pants garb of South Boston. Indeed, after Gangs of New York, Scorsese shifted local altogether. Maybe after getting to the roots of the city he felt enough closure to end that part of his directorial years. In The Departed he directs Jack Nicholson for the first time, who plays Frank Costello, an Irish-American gangster (obviously and accurately based on Bulger), who even Bill the Butcher would likely have found very low.
Some consider this Scorsese’s best film. The Academy agreed and finally awarded him his long overdue Oscar. In many ways, The Departed is his most sophisticated work, proving that a true master of craft keeps going strong. This is just as true of Jack Nicholson who adds Frank Costello to his gallery of memorable creeps and could arguably be called his magnum opus. Early in the film he delivers the lingering question of this movie. In his part of the city, what is the difference between cops and criminals indeed?
It should go without saying that The Departed is a film composed of great performances, but what is so delightfully surprising is that it showcases virtually its entire cast at their best. It’s become rare to see a Scorsese film without Leonardo DiCaprio and here he plays Billy Costigan, a police cadet trying to bury his bleak family history, which involves connections with Boston’s underworld.
It’s a testament to the complexity of the story that we feel some level of sympathy for the dirtiest player in the game, Staff Sergeant Sullivan, the police detective played by Matt Damon. He grew up under Costello’s wing, became a police officer, and now operates as Costello’s inside man. This rat is an atypical sort of fellow for Matt Damon and it too may be his best role yet. The most commendable facet of Damon’s performance is the way he captures Sullivan’s somberness with nuance. It’s lonely being on the wrong side of the law and when he graduates he is the only rookie without friends to celebrate.
Ironically, the old straight honest man is the foul-mouthed Sergeant played by Mark Wahlberg. More than anyone else, he knows what’s going on in the department and we never know exactly who he has his eye on.
The more we get to know of Billy Costigan, the more we learn of his criminal background. But that was then, this is now. He wants to be a cop and moves from Southie to the North Shore. In Boston, that’s a big deal. The city values loyalty above all else and lace curtains (the local term for someone who leaves Southie in an attempt to forget where they came from) are not well liked. Costigan is chastised by the department for trying to reinvent himself but it is Sullivan who represents bad ambition and is moving up in the wrong way. Costello helps Sullivan’s career and Sullivan keeps him in the loop, but when Costigan is assigned to infiltrate Costello’s ring by going undercover the two will collide.
It’s hard for Bostonians to let go of old ways and Scorsese illustrates this with many touches. Pay attention to a superficially unimportant scene in which Costigan visits his tube-covered Aunt Kathy. Obviously, she is suffering from lung disease and yet she continues to smoke. Even more revealing is a scene in which the mother of a murdered hood refuses to talk to the police for fear of Costello. It’s uncannily true to life, as Whitey Bulger was known to drive around neighborhoods keeping an eye on things.
Scorsese’s signature is written all over The Departed as well as his love for referencing other movies. Not surprising as this is a remake of Infernal Affairs from Hong Kong. A scene in a deli in which DiCaprio beats two rival mobsters from Providence while incongruously bouncy music plays in the background is classic Scorsese and reminiscent of the scene in Goodfellas in which Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro stomp another gangster while “Atlantis” plays hauntingly in the back.
The Boston locations are curiously brighter than Scorsese’s New York shots, this fitting with the trust and betrayal them dominating the film. All the major players here are two-faced. Costigan earns Costello’s trust only to betray him while Sullivan lies to both the police and to Costello. Hence, the brightness differentiating this from other Scorsese films is deceptive. It buries a dark underworld.
The Departed is not a wholesale criticism of the Boston Police Department but, rather, an honest examination of its history of corruption that delayed the capture of Bulger for decades. Sullivan is himself based on John Connolly, a real FBI agent who made a pact with Bulger. Costigan actually addresses this when he questions why Costello was never arrested for the multiple felonies he already had stacked against him. The only response his superiors can give him is, “We’re building a case.”
The second theme in The Departed supplements that of trust and betrayal. On a secondary level, The Departed is a story about father figures and the dangers of untrustworthy ones. Costigan finds an honest one in Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen, sounding no different than he did in Apocalypse Now). Costello always treated Sullivan like a son, but withheld from him that he was an FBI informant like the real Whitey Bulger was.
But these walls of deception are very thin indeed and create damage when they fall. One of the most exciting mechanisms at work in The Departed is the destruction of lies. There is a brilliant scene in which Costello, suspecting there is an undercover cop in his circle, grills Costigan. The dialogue is gripping thanks in large part to Nicholson’s almost demonic pleasure in tormenting his prey. It’s shot in a closed space, with back to back close ups of DiCaprio’s and Nicholson’s faces, creating an effective sense of entrapment.
Throughout The Departed Scorsese’s skills are fully realized, starting with his use of music. “I’m Shipping up to Boston” became a hit after this movie. Also in play are the director’s allusions to other movies. They work well because Scorsese doesn’t use references simply as a stylistic gimmick. He uses them to draw from our subconscious memories of how those scenes originally made us feel to suggest what we should be feeling now. Most striking is his almost identical recreation of a shower shot from Psycho that came seconds before Janet Leigh’s murder. We know by association that a demise of sorts is coming. Similarly, we know that an allusion to the last shot of The Third Man means the end of something, likely something personal.
However, the most subtle allusion in The Departed may be to The Godfather. After Don Vito dies, the last act in The Godfather dealt with Michael’s cleaning up the family business and eradicating traitors. After the death of Frank Costello, The Departed devotes its final act to similar unfinished business. Here we notice that Sergeant Sullivan is the most complex character in the film. Consider the scene in which he sets up Queenan for a dangerous confrontation and waits nervously for the outcome. What is he thinking? That we are unsure speaks for the complicated conflict of many South Bostonians. Who is a better person, he who is loyal to their upbringing at all costs or he who does the right thing? In The Departed, both options come with a price.

Infernal Affairs is haphazardly constructed and exceedingly difficult to follow, speeding through important plot points while stretching irrelevant scenes to ridiculous lengths.

In the American remake The Departed, Martin Scorsese and William Monahan oversee a welcome revamp of the script transporting its action from Hong Kong to South Boston, and from Asian gangsters to Irish-American ones. Fat has been trimmed and we’re left with a tight, fast-paced script which lets Leonardo Di Caprio, Matt Damon and especially Jack Nicholson shine.

In what is possibly his second best monologue after the watch scene from Pulp Fiction, Christopher Walken utters the following words in the largely forgotten yet underrated Poolhall Junkies:

You watch those nature documentaries on the cable? You see the one about lions? You got this lion. He’s the king of the jungle, huge mane out to here. He’s laying under a tree, in the middle of Africa. He’s so big, it’s so hot. He doesn’t want to move. Now the little lions come, they start messing with him. Biting his tail, biting his ears. He doesn’t do anything. The lioness, she starts messing with him. Coming over, making trouble. Still nothing. Now the other animals, they notice this. They start to move in. The jackals; hyenas. They’re barking at him, laughing at him. They nip his toes, and eat the food that’s in his domain. They do this, then they get closer and closer, bolder and bolder. ’Til one day, that lion gets up and tears the shit out of everybody. Runs like the wind, eats everything in his path. ’Cause every once in a while, the lion has to show the jackals, who he is.

The Departed is Jack Nicholson showing the jackals of the world who he is after a period of easy comedies. The man is just scary good, and is ably supported by Di Caprio and Damon, two actors who have been the butt of many jokes over the years but continue to impress me at least. Mark Wahlberg, too, is fantastic and should have beaten Alan Arkin for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Scorsese is the king of the gangster genre, and in lending his brilliance to a Boston setting and Irish themes he’s made a movie better even than Goodfellas

I think this is the best entertainment Hollywood has had to offer in a long time. Some people are very picky when it comes to Scorsese since they know what hes made in the past. Should this have been made by anyone else I’m sure it would have been more of a success among so called “true cinephiles.”

P.S. Check out “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” if you liked this. It shares many similar qualities, most notably the gritty, situations and quick-witted dialog, analyzing the multi-faceted functions of the criminal mind.

lol wheres the love for the best film of 2006? seems some have no appreciation for Scorsese/Schoonmakers invention of “new editing” and their new use of sound and music, great dialogue, the third man residue when Colin ask about the baby, Howard Hawks Scarface references with all the x’s everywhere.
great story, excellent direction, Marty has changed his style but some cant appreciate that, they want him to make the same films again.
I loved this move, near perfect for me, id go as far as calling it one of the best films of the decade along with no country for old men, and the hurt locker.
This film went over some peoples heads, 5 years from now theyll get it

So I am holding the Blu-Ray version of “The Departed” in my hand, look at the back and in bold capitalized letters is the quote: “MARTIN SCORSESE’S BEST FILM SINCE GOODFELLAS.” That’s a fuckin bold statement to make mister Scott Montz from ‘Access Hollywood’

To tell you the truth I haven’t seen one Scorsese movie with DiCaprio but Leo was believable in this picture. Some decent acting by Damon and Nicholson. But to be completely real I was more impressed by the classic Scorsese camera angles/shots and choice of soundtrack music than the actual movie dialogue/acting performances itself.

The plot was really fucked up too. A lot of FBI informant rat backstabbing liar undercover rat fucks so you don’t know who’s really who. And after watching the FBI deal with wires/informants in David Simon’s HBO series “The Wire” the police department depicted in this movie seem laughable.

I don’t even want to mention the ridiculous ending with the fucking rat come on Marty what was that shit? Are you just bowing down to the execs to make generic Hollywood fluff with pretty well shot violence or are you trying to make something spectacular and never experienced before in Cinema like Taxi Driver?

Go back to your Italian Neo-Realism Fellini influenced days with the gritty city settings and realistic dialogue. This is just me venting because a lot of fucking hype was surrounding The Departed, won Oscars, people saying it was a fuckin cinematic masterpiece etc.

I give it a 6.5 out of 10 stars mainly because of the shots Scorsese used but I was completely underwhelmed by this movie. I should of watched it while high maybe that would of bumped the score higher huh?

P.S. I am still looking forward to Scorsese’s and “The Sopranos” Writer Terence Winter’s new HBO television series based on the Atlantic City Casinos starring Steve Buscemi.

comparison to Infernal Affairs:

This is a question posed to Andy Lau’s character, by his live-in girlfriend, in the brilliant Cantonese film Infernal Affairs. She is a writer plodding through the plot of her new novel, which eerily mirrors the double life lived by her significant other. A small detail like this helped create characters that live and breathe with a history behind them. Unfortunately, while adding almost an hour of length, Martin Scorsese’s new remake, The Departed, fails to make the audience feel for the protagonists, as we never really know who they are. While this is a crutch making it an inferior re-envisioning, (what remake is better than its predecessor anyways?), The Departed still thrills and entertains with the best of them. I’m sure if I hadn’t seen Infernal Affairs I’d be proclaiming masterpiece along with the throngs of moviegoers of late. However, I have seen both, and even great films can still be inferior copies.

I had heard somewhere that Scorsese is a huge Asian-made film fan, causing him to decide to direct his first remake of already existing material. Upon hearing this news I have to admit I shuddered a bit; one of the greatest filmmakers who has ever lived was selling-out. I had to give him the benefit of the doubt however, and tell myself that Infernal Affairs must be superb for him to want to bring it to American audiences. With this I would usually argue the fact that we in the US are intelligent enough; just release the original with subtitles. I will refrain from that observation here, as during the one moment of Chinese in The Departed, there were numerous laughs from the crowd as it must be hilarious to hear someone speak a foreign language. I know I had a real tough time composing myself…right. Unfortunately for America, we aren’t ready for the international world, fortunately for Scorsese, he chose not to do the “new-vision film” but retain pretty much scene for scene what made the original the success it was. Kudos to Marty for sticking to what he loved about it and putting his own flair in to do homage to something he held adoration to.

The jist of the story goes as follows: One man has been turned onto the mob and asked to go undercover by joining the police academy to help all illegal doings go off risk-free. Another man has done so well in cadet school that he is approached to do a dangerous mission of infiltrating the mob, being a mole to help bring down an illustrious mob-boss. What works so well in Infernal Affairs is the fact that these two men have started on their paths at a very young age, wanting to be in the mob/police respectively and becoming the opposite at around 18 years of age. These men cross paths in the academy and 10-15 years later, we see their lives evolve and begin to care for both characters. In the American version there is a dumbing down of back-story in order for the conflict to start as soon as it possibly can. It works in so far as Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio being young and driven for a fast rise in their fields. As a result, though, we see a comparison of them being boys to the men played with real emotional resonance by Lau and the incomparable Tony Leung. These two are just so good that their English-speaking counterparts could never live up to them, and as a result I commend Marty for not trying to have them. Leung and Lau have been leading two lives for almost two decades of their adulthood, their troubles are etched to their faces for the world to see. The cop has become criminal and the criminal has become cop.

Both films are feats to behold, but of course there are always points of contention between movies from the same source material. One thing, and probably the only thing, that succeeded better in the remake is the role of mob-boss Frank Costello. Much of this is credit to the over-the-top performance by Jack Nicholson. The man is a god among actors and his facial expressions and delivery of the comical/poignant/serious dialogue is spot-on. Being a role that was mostly background plot-forwarding in the original, letting him really drive the film was a success. Of course it was a necessity, as Marty knew Damon and Leo couldn’t carry the emotional weight of the film on their shoulders alone like their Chinese counterparts. Also, major props go to screenwriter William Monagan for creating some beautiful deflection in the final elevator scene of the movie, as anyone who has viewed the original film will be thinking they know what will happen when the door opens, but be wrong. It was very satisfying to myself as I was thinking in my head, oh it’s going to play out the same, yet in fact still got to enjoy the sense of surprise with the other audience members experiencing it for the first time.

What the remake did wrong was making the girlfriends of our protagonists into the same person, adding a love triangle, which was unnecessary and distracting. Whereas the original showed us a sensitive side to these duplicitous characters, the remake wants to add tension by contrasting the two men instead of showing them as similar, if not the same. With no illwill to Vera Farmiga who does a great job here, she is contrived and used to separate the two men from each other, to make us, as the audience, choose a favorite. The beauty of the first film is that both men have their moments of good and bad, and we relate to their hardships as a result. Also, leave it to Hollywood, USA (probably the most prudish nation on earth) to want to inject a thriller with unnecessary sex scenes and then not have the guts to show anything even though the film is R. If the nudity is integral to the plot, don’t copout and only allude to it. The movie theater encounter didn’t need to be at a porn house, and the camera didn’t need to show the screen while carefully cropping anything offensive out of frame. I am hoping the producers asked for the addition to appease the male audience and not Scorsese thinking we needed the titillation to fully enjoy the film. To expand on what is wrong with Hollywood some more, having every single role played by a name actor doesn’t make the film better. Instead it just wastes the talent of great actors like Anthony Anderson, Ray Winstone, and Alec Baldwin. While Baldwin uses what little time he has to have maybe the best performance of the film, (very Glengarry Glen Ross-ish), the other roles are acted well, but under-utilized; you want more from them.

The use of morse code, path-crossing, and trust issues for their father figures (mob-boss and police chief) really make every event that transpires suspenseful and edge-of-your-seat exciting in Infernal Affairs. The Departed becomes over-blown and bloated at times, using cell phones and computers as a means of communicating without going far enough to use methods that can’t be tracked easily. There is a lack of danger, almost, as the cops and mobsters play a game where life is expendable. The original held life in high respect and as a result made every moment important and serious. Stakes just aren’t as high when no one seems to have a strong relationship with those around them. Mark Wahlberg seems to be the only one who really cares for the men he risks his life with. The smartass comments and brilliant sarcasm is what he does best, (this is probably my second favorite role of his behind I Heart Huckabees), and while I disagree with the final use of his character in the film (a far less effective ending than the original as the death toll becomes comically extensive), he was a nice addition to the script the second time around.

So, while The Departed is one of the best films of the year thus far, being a remake inherently makes it privy to scrutinization. Do yourself a favor and see the true masterpiece it was culled from and find out that foreign films can be great. While maybe the best example of a remake I’ve seen, even Scorsese can’t improve upon a classic. He can only show his love and affection for it and pay tribute. One last jab, to counteract the praise, when a movie comes out in 2002, does it really need a retelling in 2006? I’ll forgive them this time for a job well done.

Infernal Affairs 9/10
The Departed 8/10