The Departed

The Departed is a grand entertainment, the kind of movie you just sit back in your seat and let wash over you. It is not, however, any kind of eloquent statement about the nature of man. In short, an extremely well-made popcorn film for adults.

The story concerns two young men from the south side of Boston, who grew up around the criminal element. One of them, Matt Damon, is taken under the wing of the local Irish mob boss, played by Jack Nicholson. He goes to become a state policeman, a mole for Nicholson. The other, Leonardo DiCaprio, washes out of the police academy, but his background catches the attention of a task force looking for undercover men. He goes under deep cover to infiltrate Nicholson's gang.

Each of them becomes, to the other side, a rat. The rat is seen as a very despicable figure for both the cops and the crooks, and there's a lot of cross-cutting between the two men's stories. The structure of the film is thus two strands, with only cursory intersection until the end of the picture (even though they share a lover, a police pyschologist played well by Vera Farmiga).

The picture is action-packed, profane, and very funny. Nicholson gives his usual larger-than-life performance, but doesn't overwhelm Damon or DiCaprio in his scenes. At times I saw a bit of his performance as The Joker sticking through. Both Damon and DiCaprio are excellent, but Mark Wahlberg is the surprise here, stealing every scene he's in as one of the cops running the undercover operation. Of course, credit is to be given to the writer, William Monahan, who has given Walhberg excellent lines.

The film ends in the kind of body count that recalls Hamlet, and a last shot that reminds us of rats feels a bit hollow. Unlike other great pictures about the mob, such as The Godfather and Goodfellas, The Departed is more razzle-dazzle than meaningful, but is nonetheless a terrific time at the movies.