Good Cop, Bad Cop
Perhaps director Martin Scorsese is still smarting from not winning an Academy Award in 2004 for The Aviator. Maybe he’s responding to criticism that his films are “too New York” for audiences around the rest of the country to appreciate. Perhaps it was just time for him to go back to what he seems to do best, giving us edgy, sociopathic characters in a multi-layered, pot-boiler of a story.
In his latest film, The Departed, Scorsese mixes an all-star cast of well-known mainstream actors, with a riveting tale of crime and corruption, this time set not among familiar New York Italian Mafia types but South Boston Irish gangs, and by doing so gives us one that will definitely cause Oscar voters to take notice.
This movie starts off at 100 miles per hour and only gets faster. Or maybe that was my heart beating. Not since “Goodfellas” has the combination of pacing, action and storyline been so in synch as to command your attention every step of the way. There was not a wasted scene in this movie.
Appropriately enough, the story begins in the early ‘70’s, around the time when Irish residents of Boston’s South End were in violent opposition to forced school bussing of Black students into neighborhood schools. Feeling themselves under siege by outsiders, they turned inward and became even more clannish. That made the community fertile ground for thugs and hoodlums like Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) who regularly shook down local merchants in exchange for protection. Costello in turn would take a liking to a local disadvantaged youngster, Colin Sullivan and provide the means for him to grow up and get an education.
Fast forward, we are introduced to two South Boston young men as they enter and graduate from the Massachusetts State Police Academy, the grown up Sullivan (Matt Damon), and Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) the son and nephew of petty thieves associated with Costello. From there our story twists and turns on razor sharp edges, as one young man becomes the inside leak to police information for Costello’s operation, and the other the undercover police informant assigned to bring him down.
Costello wants a free hand to engage in drug trafficking, selling stolen electronic parts to potential foreign terrorists, and lots and lots of murders, and needs to know what the cops know about him. The police, in trying to disrupt his operations, are stymied by the fact that somehow Costello knows their every move.
Trust and betrayal are at the very core of this movie and the inability to know definitively who is on your side keeps the threat of danger percolating just below the surface for everyone involved. On the other hand extreme violence, in its many graphic forms, often boils over and there is no shortage of it here. The squeamish are forewarned.
Scorsese has assembled a stellar cast. Jack Nicholson steals every scene he is in. The character of Frank Costello is loosely based on real-life Boston gangster and current FBI fugitive James J. “Whitey” Bulger, and like his real-life counterpart, Costello is a dangerous snake who’d just as soon kill you as to look at you. Nicholson raises the fear level with each moment on screen.
Damon and DiCaprio disprove this reviewer’s previously held belief that they were marginally talented pretty-boys. Given meaty roles to play, they are both more than up to the task, with Damon displaying a most believable level of deception and DiCaprio conveying a street-toughness that made one forget all the charming boyish roles he’s played in the past. Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and real Boston native Mark Wahlberg credibly portray State Police officials with varying degrees of competence. Vera Farmiga, as psychiatrist Madolyn Madden, has the only significant female part, and while she makes the most of it, the character and her relationship with the two central figures almost seems a contrivance to move the story along rather than a necessity.
The story builds to a crescendo that will either leave you dissatisfied by its seemingly hasty resolution or trembling over the fact that it takes the tension up even one more notch. Either way, The Departed will take you on a ride you won’t soon forget.
Posted by bernie at October 21, 2006 6:16 PMLeave my pretty boys alone.
I will be seeing this movie. Thanx for the review.
Posted by: taylor Siluwé at October 22, 2006 12:46 PMI want to see this film. I think Scorsese is one of the best living directors, and hope this time the Academy does the right thing and gives him the Oscar. I disagree with you on Damon, however: I think he really can act and find it interesting that from time to time he plays with that 'pretty boy' image he has. And with the $$$ rolling in from the "Bourne" franchise, he can pretty much do whatever he wants. I'm still on the fence about DiCaprio (although he was good in Aviator)
Posted by: ReggieH at October 22, 2006 3:34 PMFrom my love of soap operas, to your love of sports, this is the first time (hopefully not last) that we both wholeheartedly agree on a movie. I loved the Departed. It's one of my most fave movies of all time. It's excellent!
Posted by: Kevin at November 1, 2006 1:39 PM