Review: The Departed (2006)

It has been a little under 20 years since The Departed finally won Martin Scorsese Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. In the aftermath of the film’s success, The Departed has accrued something of a reputation as a minor work for Scorsese. It’s fun, the thinking goes, yet relatively unimportant, especially compared to his weighty late period trifecta of Silence (2016), The Irishman (2019), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). This sort of thinking is understandable but misguided.

The Departed is a wildly entertaining picture, a favourite of dorm rooms and movie guys and casual filmgoers alike. It was a hit in theatres and remains a hit on cable and streaming, the kind of movie you can easily jump into halfway through and watch until the closing credits. It’s thrilling, hilarious, and one of the most effortlessly entertaining movies of the 21st century. But being entertaining does not make something minor. In fact, it’s part of what makes the film great.

As well, The Departed is not actually effortless. It only looks effortless. Every shot, cut, needle drop, and vulgar rejoinder from Billy Monahan’s script lands with such precision that you’d think the film was just pure confection, no nutrition. The film moves with a furious momentum. You almost don’t notice that 15 minutes go by before the opening title drops, and the whole two and a half hours play as a breeze (especially compared to Scorsese’s plodding trifecta already mentioned).

There are two simple shots midway through the film that capture the electric momentum of this picture. Two supporting characters, Mark Wahlberg’s Staff Sergeant Dignam and Alec Baldwin’s Captain Ellerby, argue over access to resources during a staff meeting at the police station. The camera trucks and pans in a whoosh in one direction while framing Wahlberg’s face, and then cuts to do the exact mirrored movement for Baldwin’s response. This sort of visual storytelling is proof of the film’s precision; mirroring shots that bring the themes of duality into the shot construction, constant energy, a laser focus on narrative and character and moving the story forward while keeping the viewer engaged.

That The Departed is a film of substance, in terms of character and construction and theme, is a bonus, but the substance is masked by the film’s immense entertainment value. Like so many great Hollywood films (perhaps the greatest ones), the entertainment factor of The Departed makes the film’s substance all but invisible; the liquor goes down smooth.

It’s useful to briefly compare The Departed to the film it’s based on: Alan Mark and Felix Chong’s Infernal Affairs. Infernal Affairs is also a remarkable film, but it’s more sombre and fixated on the tragic intertwining fates of cops and criminals than its remake. Both films share a basic plot, but while Infernal Affairs leans more into the weight of its classical storytelling, The Departed feels more like pure entertainment. But make no mistake: The Departed is a weighty picture as well. 

It’s a brilliant character piece and interrogation of identity that seems even more perceptive in retrospect. Although perhaps accidental, the film interrogates the way that people in the modern world are constantly constructing identities and negotiating the way they present themselves to the various subcultures that dominate their environments. In 2024, creating an identity wholecloth via the internet is the norm. In 2006, such an interrogation of identity creation seemed more novel, less timely. But the added years have allowed us to see how the film’s cat-and-mouse game between a cop pretending to be a crook (Leonardo DiCaprio, robbed of an Oscar at the time) and a crook pretending to be a cop (Matt Damon, as weasley as he’s ever been) is not just crime movie fun. It almost becomes a horror movie about how the roles we play end up consuming us, the identities we try to create erasing the very people we are.

The Departed perceptively explores the weight of expectations, the limitations of class, and the ways that some people are able to flit seamlessly between one social class to another, while others are incapable of ever truly fitting in. Think of the early scene where Martin Sheen’s kindly Captain Quinlan informs DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan that he will never be a cop because of who his family is. Billy’s dejection and quiet acceptance of Quinlan’s words are all you need to know that what he said is true: Billy can never outrun his upbringing.

Speaking of DiCaprio, he’s excellent in the role. At the time, DiCaprio was still in the reinvention period of his career, where he transitioned from heartthrob to serious actor capable of tough guy roles. His work with Scorsese, especially in this film and Gangs of New York, was a naked bid to gain more respect in the industry and bonafides with a certain subset of viewers. At the time, I recall being surprised that DiCaprio could play such a convincing badass. In retrospect, I realize he’s only half convincing, which is a feature, not a bug.

DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan is trying so hard to be something he’s not at all times in the film; he’s like a child who desperately wants approval from a father that won’t give him the time of day. His two father figures here, Sheen’s Quinlan and Jack Nicholson’s deranged crime boss Frank Costello, do give him some of what he needs, but hardly in ways that truly fulfill him. He wants to be the good cop to one, the good foot soldier for the other, but both are ultimately using him to forward their ends and play out the game against their counterpart.

Thus, DiCaprio is an open wound here and shockingly vulnerable. His quieter moments with Vera Farmiga’s psychiatrist-turned-love interest, Madolyn, register particularly strongly. In one scene, Billy talks about being in the room with a psychopath and the mental fortitude needed to ensure that one’s hand doesn’t shake despite the fear gripping you inside. DiCaprio’s hand is steady in the scene, but his voice is not; it wavers, shaking in place of his hand, betraying the fear and discomfort that overwhelms him. He’s excellent, heart breaking, which makes his tragic end all the more painful.

Damon is also at his best as the scumbag shyster Colin Sullivan, who has been playing the choir boy all his life at the behest of ol’ uncle Frank Costello—we literally see him as a choir boy in the childhood scenes to start the film. Damon is typically cast as a heroic leading man, but he might be best when he’s playing characters who are hiding pathologies behind the facade of heroism. His best performance might be Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and even his cameo appearance in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) draws on his talent for hiding malevolence within conventionally heroic attributes.

Damon might not have as many quiet, vulnerable moments as DiCaprio, but in many ways, he’s the prime mover of the film, as his insatiable appetite for more power and more prestige (just think of the massive apartment he moves into, which the realtor guarantees will make him upper class in a week) forces him to play everyone against everyone. His self-righteous indignation in moments is truly disgusting, but Damon is also charismatic and funny here, so we never grow tired of watching Colin make one bad decision after another, screwing over one more ally after another.

Of course, the cruel irony of The Departed is that neither men are able to survive such an arduous process of playacting as their environment ultimately cannot accommodate their constantly changing identities. Only two key characters are left standing in the end: Vera Farmiga’s bereft Madolyn, who realizes the man she was going to marry was responsible for the death of the one she loved, and Mark Wahlberg’s Dignan, who refuses to compromise his ethics or identity. It’s fitting, then, that Colin’s downfall comes at the hand of Dignan, who returns to clean house and provide the retribution that the larger system is incapable of delivering due to its systemic dysfunctions.

The film’s ending is remarkably cynical and perceptive about the larger failures of the system and this particular cultural environment writ large. But the ending does not play like a season finale of The Wire. It’s not sombre, but rather ends with a cheeky visual gag, as a rat runs along Colin’s apartment railing while his corpse bleeds out in the foreground. Again, the entertainment serves as a trojan horse for the larger thematic lesson. Like the central characters, it presents as one thing, reveals another, and plays with our expectations constantly. The film’s quiet intelligence is further proof that The Departed is not just great entertainment, but a great work of art.

10 out of 10

The Departed (2006, USA)

Directed by Martin Scorsese; written by William Monahan, based on Infernal Affairs by Alan Mak and Felix Chong; starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, Alec Baldwin.

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