The Departed (2006)

The Departed 2006 Review starts with a cranberry juice and a disagreement about how to pronounce Scorsese. So, a fairly disciplined opening by Born to Watch standards. Whitey, Dan, and Gow head to Boston for a film where everyone's lying, nobody can answer their phone without making things worse, and Mark Wahlberg seems to have been given a script made up entirely of reasons to tell people to piss off.

Leonardo DiCaprio is Billy Costigan, a cop sent undercover into the crew of Boston crime boss Frank Costello. Matt Damon is Colin Sullivan, Costello's man inside the police. The two blokes are looking for each other, and the longer it goes on, the more you wonder how either of them manages to get through a day. Billy looks like he's about to have a heart attack every time his phone goes off. Colin could sell you a used car while you're standing next to the bloke he stole it from.

And then there's Jack. Nicholson plays Costello like a man who's worked out that everybody in the room is too frightened to ask him to settle down. He can make you laugh and then make you feel a bit crook for laughing. You can see why the boys have so much fun talking about him. You can also see why a film with this many good actors turns into a fight over who steals it. Wahlberg comes in swinging, Alec Baldwin sweats like Dan, and Ray Winstone manages to look like the last person you'd want to see coming through a doorway without raising his voice.

Vera Farmiga gets plenty of love, too. Madolyn has the misfortune of meeting both Billy and Colin, which gives Farmiga some terrific scenes and gives Whitey a question he can't let go. How many psychiatrists are there in Boston, and how have these two dickheads managed to find the same one? It's the kind of thing you'll happily go with on your first watch because you're too busy trying to remember who knows what. Come back to it a few times, and you start wondering how she manages her appointments.

That sends the boys back to Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong thriller that gave The Departed its two-mole setup. It's a cracking idea for a movie. Give both sides a bloke on the inside, make both of them good at their jobs and see who cracks first. Moving it to Boston also gives Scorsese an excuse to put this particular collection of actors in rooms together and let them get on each other's nerves. The accents are a discussion in themselves. We're three Australians arguing about how to say the director's name, so naturally we feel qualified to weigh in.

The big question is whether this is the Scorsese film you'd have given him the Oscar for. Whitey's glad he finally got it and can still think of a few he'd put ahead of The Departed. Fair enough, but put this on late at night and see how easy it is to turn it off. You know who's working for whom. You know what's coming. And somehow you're still sitting there watching two blokes with mobile phones, thinking one of them really ought to hang up.

Then there's the rat. Dan's seen the film about 15 times, and that final shot still gives him the shits. So, in Film School for F-Wits, he takes aim at directors who spend a whole movie making a point and then get to the end and decide we could use a picture. You've got to hand it to Scorsese. In a film featuring DiCaprio, Damon, Nicholson and Wahlberg, the performance we’re still arguing about belongs to a rat that gets a few seconds of screen time.

So grab a cranberry juice and spend a couple of hours in Boston with Whitey, Dan and Gow.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION and tell us who steals the film, which Scorsese movie you'd have handed him the Oscar for and whether you'd give that rat the arse.
If you're doing your homework for next week, we're staying in 2006 and finally getting around to Bond with Casino Royale.

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