I know I will earn brickbats for this, but The Departed, Martin Scorsese's latest movie on cops-n-gangs-in-Boston did not impress me as I thought it would. That said, I would add thatThe Departed is an excellent movie. The performances are above par, though I found Leonardo DiCaprio delivering a far better performance in Blood Diamond. Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson are at their best, and Scorsese tells the story in a gripping way.
The Departed narrates the story of the police department fighting the crime syndicate in Boston. The mafia is led by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). The cops infiltrate the gang with a member of their own, Billy Costigan (Lenoardo DiCaprio). Meanwhile, Costello gets one of his own team members Colin Sulivan (Matt Damon) join the police force, to be on the inside track.
As the story unfolds, both Costello and the cops become aware that there is someone in their own teams, leaking information to the opposite side. A witchhunt follows, and the body count rises. One by one, Costello, Queenan and mafia suspects are shot dead. After the deaths of Costello and Queenan (cop chief) Costello's rat take charge at the police department. He tries to trap Costigan, but is trapped himself. At the end of a fast-paced sequence of events, Costigan falls to a gangster's bullet, even while he was trying to arrest the gangster in uniform.
The gangster's climb to the top of the police order, however, is cut short when Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) shoots down Sullivan, bringing an end to the gory tale of pursuit and revenge. Before his death, Costigan had passed on a CD to Sullivan's - and his own- girlfriend, containing voice records of Costello talking to Sullivan, while Costigan was the undercover cop working in Costello's gang. She had in turn passed it on to Dignam, the flashy upright cop in the undercover department. Dignam pulls the trigger, ending the story in a quick shot just when you start feeling that the Faithful Departed have taken their secrets with them, leaving the ground wide open for Sullivan. Since stories cannot end with the villain stealing the show, Scorsese gets Sullivan's girlfriend to pass the CD to Dignam, who does the job for Scorsese. How does the girl know that Dignam is the upright guy who would end the game? Scorsese does not make it clear.
Violence and vulgarity litter the movie from start to finish. The Departed has more filthy language built into it than all English movies I have seen in the last five years, including porn movies. However, this, by itself, does not make the movie any worse. Violence of such scale is very much understandable in a movie of this nature. However, Scorsese left me wishing for more. The Departed does not have a moral like Babel or Blood Diamond. It chronicles violence and retribution in a matter-of-fact, yet intriguing way. It is a director's film, Scorsese's touchstone of his own skills. He wins. But it has left me wanting.
