Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here. You may have noticed, but I don’t tend to work blue in my writing. There are family members who read my reviews, and they don’t much care for the four-letter words. That doesn’t mean I don’t throw in the occasional curse word every so often, but if you look at my body of work, I usually only get dirty when I hate a movie so much, it makes me mad enough to do so. This is not the case with the latest Martin Scorsese masterwork The Departed. Oh no. Holy motherfucking shit, this movie rocks 18 different sizes and shapes of balls. Balls were rocked so hard, in fact, I think certain areas of the taint may have been injured. I walked out of this movie stumbling from exhaustion and with an awesome sense of uncertainty. How was I going to do this film justice in a review? Maybe I just did. To say that Scorsese has returned to form is something of an insult to the man’s between-gangster-films accomplishments. Returning to the world of organized crime is nothing new; he’s reinvented the crime drama several times over with films like Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino, and even Gangs of NewYork. But The Departed is more of a culmination (although by no means a finale) of the career of the greatest American director still alive and working today. People have been cautiously optimistic at Scorsese’s return to the world of gangsters, and I’m here to tell you that you can officially lose any doubt. In a year when so many highly anticipated films have been either complete letdowns or not as good as they should be, The Departed is a film that is damn near flawless and actually exceeds expectations. If you read my preview of the Chicago International Film Festival, you’ll see that a couple more damn near perfect films are on the horizon (Oscar baiting season has officially begun, after all), but this film is an earthquake in your soul. It helps that Scorsese has assembled the greatest cast of the year. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Billy Costigan a low-level Massachusetts State cop with no family and little to lose, who is elevated to become an undercover agent in Boston’s Irish mob, led by one of the most evil creatures ever to occupy a movie screen, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Only his superiors, played by Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg (one of the few Boston-area natives actually in the main cast), know Costigan's. The other major player in the film’s massive cat-and-mouse game is Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon, also a Boston son), who works as part of the Special Investigation Unit in the department, whose job is to take down Costello with help from the inside man. The only problem is Sullivan was practically raised by Costello and works as a high-ranking mole inside the department. Neither Costigan nor Sullivan know who the other person is, but they become aware of the other’s existence eventually. The name of the game for everyone in this film is self-preservation, no matter what the cost. It’s an elaborate and sometimes overwhelming plot, but Scorsese and screenwriter William Monahan (Kingdom of Heaven) devote a lot of time and effort keeping everything clear and sensible. They also keep things bloody, tense, and moving at lightning speed. Some of you may know that The Departed’s screenplay is based (rather faithfully, at times) on the Hong Kong epic Infernal Affairs, which spawned two sequels and a sizeable following on this side of the Pacific. And the material is so strong and so clearly inspired by American crime dramas, that it was only natural someone to remake it. But for Scorsese to be so successful with such a winding and crazed plot…well, I don’t know why I’m so surprised he pulled it off. The crimes that Costello and his crew are pulling off (involving everything from drug deal to selling hi-tech equipment to the Chinese government) hardly matter to the success of the film. DiCaprio and Damon are tougher and more intense than I’ve ever seen them before, and while Costigan acts on instinct and emotion, Sullivan is more calculating and clever. He sees every angle and every possible way he could get caught before he makes a move. Damon allows us to see the wheels turning in Sullivan’s eyes, and it makes us fear him more because he’s so cunning. Rounding out the stellar cast are the likes of Kevin Corrigan, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Anderson, Ray Winstone, and Vera Farmiga (Running Scared) as a psychiatrist who gets involved, unknowingly, with both men (perhaps the film’s hardest-to-believe plot point). Some of these great actors are in fairly small roles, but nobody gets left behind, and everyone just chews up scenery like it’s made of candy. As the two leads get deeper into their roles and their secrets are on the brink of getting blown, they get more and more desperate, careless, and paranoid. Everything is so good about this film that it would be a shame to single out a particular performance come awards season (although Nicholson would be the obvious front-runner). This has to be the film that earns Scorsese his Oscar. This is arguably his finest work since Goodfellas, and I can’t imagine any other movie in the roster of 2006 releases bouncing me off the walls like The Departed. Time to revise those Best Of lists again; I’m sure it won’t be the last time in the next three months. Capone
