Review: The Departed
Saturday, October 7th, 2006
Scorsese delivers another cinematic masterpiece with his latest film, The Departed. Beware potential spoiler here. Read on:
There’s a strong impulse to embrace Martin Scorsese’s latest movie The Departed just because it revisits territory that he practically mapped himself. The director’s recent ventures into period pieces and biopics have felt more like experiments or digressions; this, on the otherhand, rings truer to the oeuvre that established him as a singular cinematic voice. That said, there’s a big part of that vision that feels uncontainable, as if Scorsese can’t quite be pegged no matter how many times he returns to the same well.
All of which is why The Departed is at once a crowning achievement in crime cinema, and a slight letdown for a career iconoclast: Scorsese has produced another masterpiece more on par with previous works like Casino and Cape Fear than Goodfellas or Raging Bull. In other words, the director follows two personal projects with a more conventional but no less engaging piece of populist entertainment — in so doing restoring his well-earned reputation as both an earner and artist, but failing to genuinely expand his creative accomplishments beyond those he already achieved.
Based on the 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, The Departed stars Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator) and Matt Damon (Syriana) as a cop and a crook who infiltrate each other’s organizations at the behest of their scenery-chewing superiors. For DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan, it’s Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg), a police Captain and Sergeant respectively who want to harness the young man’s conflicted impulse to do good; meanwhile, Damon’s Colin Sullivan answers to Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), an 800-lb. gorilla of a mob boss who owns the streets of Boston much to the consternation of the cops.
There’s a strong impulse to embrace Martin Scorsese’s latest movie The Departed just because it revisits territory that he practically mapped himself. The director’s recent ventures into period pieces and biopics have felt more like experiments or digressions; this, on the otherhand, rings truer to the oeuvre that established him as a singular cinematic voice. That said, there’s a big part of that vision that feels uncontainable, as if Scorsese can’t quite be pegged no matter how many times he returns to the same well.
All of which is why The Departed is at once a crowning achievement in crime cinema, and a slight letdown for a career iconoclast: Scorsese has produced another masterpiece more on par with previous works like Casino and Cape Fear than Goodfellas or Raging Bull. In other words, the director follows two personal projects with a more conventional but no less engaging piece of populist entertainment — in so doing restoring his well-earned reputation as both an earner and artist, but failing to genuinely expand his creative accomplishments beyond those he already achieved.
Based on the 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, The Departed stars Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator) and Matt Damon (Syriana) as a cop and a crook who infiltrate each other’s organizations at the behest of their scenery-chewing superiors. For DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan, it’s Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg), a police Captain and Sergeant respectively who want to harness the young man’s conflicted impulse to do good; meanwhile, Damon’s Colin Sullivan answers to Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), an 800-lb. gorilla of a mob boss who owns the streets of Boston much to the consternation of the cops.
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