“The Departed could finally win best picture Oscar gold for seasoned director
Starring Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen and Vera Farmiga. Directed by Martin Scorsese.At major theaters now.
CAIRO: Martin Scorsese is back. After going for Oscar gold and coming up short with 2002’s “Gangs of New York and 2004’s “The Aviator, with “The Departed, Scorsese makes a welcome return to the genre that made him an icon: the ensemble gangster flick.
Whereas the previous two films in his celluloid oeuvre felt bloated, overwrought and marred by their grand historical overtures, “The Departed is a fast-paced workout filled with wise guys, wise cops and more machismo than a body building convention.
Set in the slums of Boston rather than in Scorsese’s usual New York hoods, the film starts with a voice over from the shadowy crime boss Frank Costello, played here by Jack Nicholson in his most wonderfully over the top performance since 1989’s “Batman.
While Nicholson is practically operatic in his exaggerated bad guy role, his cartoonish performance is countered and contrasted by the rest of the cast, which is bursting with so much A-list talent that the whole movie might have sunk in the hands of a lesser director.
Indeed, you know the cast is stacked when Alec Baldwin and Martin Sheen have small roles rather than starring ones.
Based on the 2002 Hong Kong thriller “Infernal Affairs, the plotline starts simply enough. Billy Costigan, played by a razor sharp Leonardo DiCaprio, enters the ranks of the Boston police department and is quickly reassigned as an undercover mole thanks to his connections in Boston’s criminal underworld.
While working his way through the ranks of Boston’s Irish-dominated underbelly, Costigan comes across another undercover mole – Matt Damon’s Colin Sullivan.
But herein lays the rub: while Damon is a cop, he’s working instead for Nicholson’s bad guys and is planted firmly in the upper ranks of the Boston police force. The rest of the film sees Damon and DiCaprio involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse, with each character working to smoke out the other without blowing his own cover.
In an example of perfect casting, the two actors look like twins separated at birth, and as the action unfolds, their lives become so intertwined that they become involved with the same woman, a police psychiatrist played by Vera Farmiga.
As the sole female character in the film, Farmiga does double duty as love interest to both DiCaprio and Damon, and her cheating ways add another dynamic layer to the dramatic action; watching each of the three characters play out this bizarre love triangle is one of the film’s highlights, and it throws another twist into an already complex and fast-paced plot.
Of course, as with most of Scorsese’s films, there are plenty of fist fights, gun battles and gut wrenching plot twists along the way, and the drama is torqued up by a soundtrack that features everything from The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd to Irish jigs, punk rock and a smattering of opera.
It’s a wild ride and one of the best films of the year.
In fact, if the movie has one shortcoming, it’s the tough guy dialogue, which is so snappy and fast-paced that it sometimes overshadows the character’s inner motivations and creates a barrier between the actors’ onscreen interaction.
Still, that’s a minor glitch in an otherwise fantastic piece of work.
While the movie may not deliver Scorsese – who turns 64 on Friday – the best picture award that has so far eluded him, “The Departed at least shows that this good old fella of American cinema is back on his game.
