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Gangster Frank Costello (Jack
Nicholson) lords it over Boston 's Irish American community, outdoing all other mobsters in drug dealing and other crimes related to it. In the same community, William
Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) grow up along rough parallel paths which diverge when they reach adolescence. Costigan aspires to become a state
trooper and enrolls in the police academy; Sullivan becomes Costello's right-hand man and joins the police force as the gangster's mole. They are cops in the same community
but neither is aware of it: only Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Sgt. Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) know, as they have handpicked Costigan to do undercover work—infiltrating
Costello's inner circle. Intrigues and tensions rise in the cat-and-mouse game as Costigan feeds the police information about Costello's schemes and whereabouts while
Sullivan leaks to Costello police plans to ensnare the hoodlum. Both Sullivan and Costigan take their jobs dead seriously, knowing there are leaks, but the truth about the
other's position in the force is hidden to both of them. Soon Capt. Queenan and Sgt. Dignam appoints Sullivan as head of the team assigned to discover who's Costello's mole
among the cops. Costello smells a rat in his team but hardly suspects Costigan.
The Departed is a remake of Infernal Affairs, a second-rate crime movie from Hong Kong , but under the direction of Martin Scorsese it turns out far superior to its original version. Credit it to the acting of the stellar cast led by the four men (DiCaprio, Nicholson, Damon and Wahlberg) who even physically look like they've come out of the same cast: gritty, hard-boiled, self-contained, human islands. Damon plays his character like the topnotch betrayer it is meant to be. A mature DiCaprio delivers a riveting performance that could be the best in his entire career. Wahlberg playing the foul-mouthed cop at times even threatens to overshadow DiCaprio. And no one is better at being bad than Nicholson whose sinister snicker can render the script superfluous. Vera Farmiga as Madeleine, the psychiatrist caught in a triangle between Costigan and Sullivan, executes her role with just the right blend of vulnerability and sensuality. The scrupulously and cleverly edited
The Departed scores high in keeping the viewer at the edge of his seat with its clear plot and story development.
The amount of profanity in the movie may offend the auditory nerves of viewers accustomed to
polite conversations, but just like the blood and the violence, four letter words are endemic in a cops-and-goons environment, in the same way that a story on priests or nuns and
other consecrated persons would be incomplete without "otherworldly" talk or dialogue that shines with virtue. The Departed
offers a window through which its audience may view family, loyalty, betrayal, and the fate that results from the choices one makes in life. Due to its topic--the dark secrets residing in the bowels of organized crime--
The Departed is better confined to adult viewership.
(Date Reviewed: 06 October 2006)
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