The Departed: Movie, DVD, HD DVD & Blu-ray Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

Finally, the race is on. The battle for Best Picture begins with Martin Scorsese’s "The Departed," an outstanding return to form that might, in the end, prove too violent for the Academy to embrace fully, but which nevertheless will be nominated across the board in several major categories.

The film, which screenwriter William Monahan based on the under-seen 2002 Hong Kong film "Infernal Affairs" (itself a spin on Scorsese’s "Mean Streets"), spiders through the darkest corners of South Boston, where it digs into that city’s underworld in ways that make Boston’s Big Dig look shallow in comparison.

In its most streamlined form, the film’s monster of a plot conspires to protect and to bring down one man - crime boss Frank Costello (a perfectly sleazy Jack Nicholson), who lives the sort of double life favored by a few other men in the movie.

On one level, Frank could be viewed as just a successful businessman, somebody who has done well with restaurants, pubs, porn. On another level, the one in which he thrives, he sells contraband to the East and is the mastermind behind a major drug cartel.

For added flavor, he sports the sort of wily fright wig that recalls Nick Nolte’s infamous 2002 mug shot when he was busted for drunken driving, and he is more than content to enter a room with his hands and forearms drenched in blood, obviously from some off-screen murder gone well.

Since Frank could never remain a free man on his own, his army is formidable, with the key element being Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), the man Frank shrewdly groomed when he was just a boy. It’s Colin, a rising star at the police department, who works the inside angles for Frank, alerting him to each investigation that threatens to bring him down. He’s Costello’s mole.

For Frank, what’s becoming increasingly clear is that the department has its own mole. He doesn’t know who it is - in part, the movie’s narrative drive comes from Frank and Colin trying to find out, but we know. It’s Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), who was hired by an elite undercover unit led by Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg to get enough dirt on Costello to lock him away forever.

What stems from this is a movie that steams with excellence. Scorsese hasn’t just returned to his roots in "The Departed." Instead, he has brashly pulled them out of his beloved New York and punched them down deeper in Boston, a new city and a new muse with its own mysteries and rhythms whose unfamiliarity has allowed the director the freedom to do some of his best work.

He isn’t alone. Throughout, the casting and the performances are flawless; there’s the sense that everybody came to have a good time, and not at the cost of cheating their characters of nuance or depth. Monahan’s dialogue is particularly good, so in-your-face raunchy and real, it joins Scorsese and company in making this terrific, bloody, 2½-hour movie feel among the leanest and most compelling thus far this year.

Grade: A