Review: The Departed

Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon play two Irish-American Boston boys who grow up to be cops. However, whilst Damon was mentored from an early age by mobster Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) to become his inside man, DiCaprio gets picked by Capt. Queenan (Martin Sheen) and verbally abusive Sgt. Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) to be their own inside man into Costello’s gang. Both DiCaprio and Damon are looking for moles inside the two organisations, i.e. each other. Vera Farmiga plays a police shrink who becomes romantically involved with Damon, whilst also professionally seeing DiCaprio. Alec Baldwin plays Damon’s immediate superior on the force, who is oblivious to Damon’s true allegiances and (get this) puts Damon in charge of investigating…himself, basically. Ray Winstone plays Costello’s rough and tough right-hand man, whilst Anthony Anderson is a cop who graduated at the same time as DiCaprio.

 

Entertaining, but not one of the better films from director Martin Scorsese (“Taxi Driver”, “Raging Bull”, “Goodfellas”, “Hugo”), this 2006 cops vs. crooks flick is never dull but suffers from contrivances, and an unsatisfactory romantic element. Scripted by William Monahan (“Kingdom of Heaven”, “Body of Lies”, “Edge of Darkness”), the film is actually a remake of “Infernal Affairs”, and is thus completely unnecessary, much like Scorsese’s remake of “Cape Fear”, though this film is at least better than that one.

 

After a few fascinating and ambitious (if unwieldy) epic-scale dramatic pictures (“The Aviator” and “Gangs of New York”), Scorsese returns to potentially safer gangster territory for this profane cops-and-crims picture. Despite a hell of an ensemble cast and interesting Boston flavour, the film never quite makes it to the big leagues, and is frankly overrated. This is mostly because the HK crime flick “Infernal Affairs” is pretty standard issue material beneath this great man’s talents. It could also have lost the extremely contrived subplot involving Farmiga’s character, that isn’t nearly as interesting as the rest of the film. I’ve seen the film twice now, and the Farmiga character is indeed the film’s biggest problem. I have no idea what the two composite characters from the original that this character is based on are like, but Scorsese should’ve seen that the character just doesn’t work here. It’s a contrivance and she is portrayed as unrealistically unprofessional. On my second viewing, the notion that Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio’s characters being unaware of one another seemed less of a contrivance, but not quite enough for me to give him a pass on it. Scorsese and Monahan try to cover over some of the more unlikely things in the film like that, but it can’t be denied that the Farmiga character is a big gaping wound left wide open. And filled with disgusting puss and blood. There’s just no reason beyond contrivance, for there to be a love triangle in this story. It isn’t necessary and it isn’t welcome. The relationship between Farmiga and DiCaprio just doesn’t convince.

 

So the film isn’t great. It’s no “Goodfellas”. It does, however have the ingredients for a potentially great film, and there’s still lots of things to enjoy here. In fact, I may have enjoyed it more the second time around. The biggest reason to see the film if you haven’t already is quite simply Jack. This isn’t the subtle Jack Nicholson of “About Schmidt”, not in the slightest. This is Jack being Jack in a Martin Scorsese cops and crooks film, and he’s quite simply bloody marvellous. His opening narration is terrific, and so long as you can tolerate and appreciate Jack being Jack, then you’ll love him here. Some might be surprised to see Nicholson in this role, but De Niro is too identified as Italian, and Robert Duvall wouldn’t be brutal or menacing enough. So Nicholson was the right choice. There’s few things more dicey than a negotiation involving opponents with machine guns, and speaking languages that require a translator. You need to watch and listen, ‘coz you’re getting the words on a delay. Add Jack Nicholson to the mix, as a man with little sense of tact and a whole lotta unpredictability, and boy is it a recipe for tension and potential violence. So in that sense, Jack is pitch-perfect casting. Scorsese deals with Catholicism in a lot of his films, so it’s interesting that he uses the Jack Nicholson character here to espouse some very negative views about Catholic priests (It’s hard to blame him, to be honest. I’m sure a lot of Catholics are dissatisfied with their Church on the child sex abuse issue).

 

I didn’t find Leonardo DiCaprio terribly convincing here on first viewing, he seemed a little too baby-faced. But I’ve softened somewhat on second viewing. He’s OK, I guess, but much better in the same year’s “Blood Diamond”. Much more effective is a perfectly cast Matt Damon, who plays the polar opposite of Leonardo DiCaprio here. It’s interesting to see these two guys from a psychological perspective, one a cop pretending to be a crook, the other a cop who really is a crook. But there’s no doubt that Damon is much more fun to watch. Both are attempting to keep up facades, but Damon’s the more fascinating one here because he’s juggling several balls in the air, trying to keep everything straight. He’s a hot-shot, charismatic cop on the take, and feeling the pressure from both sides. It’s interesting that Scorsese has given both DiCaprio and Damon father figures here, with Martin Sheen providing a much more stable and moral paternal figure for DiCaprio than Nicholson does for Damon, who has been under Nicholson’s wing for a very long time. There’s also fine support from Ray Winstone and Alec Baldwin here, among others. Winstone may not convince as a Bostonite, but he does convince as a man with whom not to fuck. He’s one helluva scary man. Baldwin is rock-solid as one of the cops, and his accent is a bit more believable than whatever he was trying for in “Outside Providence”. I thought Mark Wahlberg was a strange choice to be the only one in this film to receive an Oscar nomination. However, I can’t deny that this is one of his best and funniest performances ever. He makes for a very funny prick, and watching him and Damon go toe-to-toe with their duelling Boston-accented tough guy schtick, is one of the film’s highlights for sure.

 

One of the biggest talking points about the film is its ending. Ridiculous, audacious, kind of brilliant- it’s really something. It’s a shame that plot contrivances and the need for a female love interest get in the way here. Although I wish Scorsese wouldn’t do remakes, this is a solid and entertaining film that could’ve been even more if the screenplay were pared down a bit and smartened up. This film could’ve and should’ve been excellent (it’s a pretty weak Best Picture Oscar winner), that it still manages to be quite good is somewhat mindboggling, really.

 

Rating: B-