Disclaimer: This is not a review. This is a typical fanboy behavior exhibited by a movie lover for a film so fan-tabulous! Though a little late considering that the movie is almost 3 yrs old, still, better late than never.
This movie won 49 awards including 4 oscars.
It was rated at 92% on rotten tomatoes (those who follow this site know what 92% means)
It had 4 of the world's most amazing actors drowning neck deep in their characters.
But thats not all. It had one more achievement to its name.
It made rats look so interesting for the first time.
Welcome to The Departed!
When I was your age they would say we can become cops, or criminals. Today, what I'm saying to you is this: when you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?
Where else do one see a gangster deliver a punch of a line like this with such grit and amazing meanness. It could only be done by Jack Nicholson and it could only be thought by Martin Scorsese. A poem of violence sung in the backdrop of emotions.
Now agreed, Jack Nicholson is a truckload of talent. So one can expect that kind of brilliance from him. But what about Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, or even Mark Wahlberg...well, each one of 'em does justice to the position they have been placed - alongside other greats...and the eventual outcome is that you can see each one of them portraying the mean, mischievous and maverick characters so effortlessly.
This movie takes you to the underbelly of Boston. And takes you very authentically. Even the stills had the feel. See the above image, the skyline seen over the words "Departed" is that of Boston city. The attention to detail flows thruout the film. Born to an Irishi-American family in the Boston neighborhood, William Monahan (who adapted the screenplay for this movie) incorporates the culture and history of Boston heavily into the film. The first images are news clips from the busing riots the 1970s, over which Costello i.e. Nicholson muses about the city's troubled racial history. And the musing become unforgettable:
I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me. Years ago we had the church. That was only a way of saying - we had each other. The Knights of Columbus were real head-breakers; true guineas. They took over their piece of the city. Twenty years after an Irishman couldn't get a fucking job, we had the presidency. May he rest in peace. That's what the niggers don't realize. If I got one thing against the black chappies, it's this - no one gives it to you. You have to take it.
And then, the rats start moving. Damon is the rat in Mass. state police and Leonardo is a rat in Costello's empire. And one can easily see the tensions and the pains that rats have to endure to dig in. Be it the scene in which Costello breaks Caprio's already broken rib or where he is about to be identified by someone on Costello's side, the emotions are so natural, the environment so brutally tense and the creepiness of the whole thing so visible, that you might forgive ur brain for envisioning urself in a dingy boston bar and seeing the rats by ur own eyes.
And its not just the cinematography thats brilliant. The timed humour, the gritty authenticity, the constant tensions, the buried energy that keeps coming out at places, the ethnic slurs, the whole dynamics of voilence and the ensemble of emotions, the expansive canvas of brilliant actors...so much...so much makes this movie a compelling watch, a true entertainer seen rarely even in hollywood.
Popular critic James Berardinelli awarded the film four stars out of four, praising it as "an American epic tragedy." But this man was just a reviewer, watch it for yourself if you haven't, and you might become a fan of this legend of a movie, of the man who earlier gave us Goodfellas, and who unbelievably topped his golden work with a masterpiece like this, Martin Scorsese. Hats off!
