# 2: The Departed

er, I mean "The Depaaated."

It should have been a monumental clusterfuck: a Hollywood remake of a Hong Kong film (Infernal Affairs) that was less than five years old. What could be the point, other than take a perfectly good piece of Asian cinema and whiten it up to make it more "accessible" for the drooling rubes in malls across the U.S. You know, those folks who can't handle subtitles, because if they wanted to read, they'd buy a copy of Maxim? That sentiment was tempered a bit by the knowledge that Martin Scorsese was directing, but it's not like he's incapable of dropping a steaming load into the waiting maws of the American filmgoer. One way or another, I was looking forward to seeing "The Departed," but I was certainly bracing myself for the worst.

It turned out to be Scorsese's best movie since Goodfellas and perhaps his most purley entertaining to date. Using the can't-miss high concept behind Infernal Affairs gives Scorsese something that his films are usually sorely lacking in: a tightly constructed plot. Putting Scorsese's considerable skill at creating dynamic scenes and palpable atmosphere to the service of a compelling story is like dropping a jet engine into a...milk truck or, something...I don't know...is the jet engine Scorsese or the plot? Whatever my lame metaphor might be, the point stands that the addition of Martin Scorese direction to tight plot equals a whole lot of awesome. With most Scorsese films, the propulsive energy that powers the first half hour or so ends up dissipating as the movie thrashes around for another two hours trying to find things for the characters to do while they snarl at each other and the camera whips around artfully. Here, the characters are always concentrating on the issue at hand, and their focus becomes the audiences, which means that the particular Scorsese frission that's always present at the onset of his films stays with you the whole way through.

Besides borrowing a plot from Hong Kong, the other genuis move of the filmmakers behind The Departed was the decision to set the film in South Boston's notoriously close-knit Irish community. While Scorsese is the unchallenged king of New York Italian mob movies, those characters: slicked-back black hair, shiny suits and gold chains, familiar "fuggetaboutit" accents and enduring love for "noodles and gravy" are stock characters at this point. By using a new city, a new accent, and a new ethnicity, Scorsese ensures that all of his carefully crafted atmospherics and knowing commentary on the clanish nature of white ethnic urban enclaves pops out at the viewer instead of becoming a by-now familiar ambient noise.

The palpable sense of place that Scorsese creates serves to give all of his characters fully-realized and believable context. The competing forces tearing at Leonardo DiCaprio's undercover cop and Matt Damon's undercover crook arise from their surroundings. DiCaprio is driven by a compulsion to prove his worth to his dead father, who came from a family of crooks and didn't want his son to follow in those footsteps. At the same time, the social structure of Southie, where Jack Nicholson's Frank Costello rules all that he surveys, rewards bold criminality and has its own sinister allure. It's that allure, not to mention the search for a father figure in Costello, that drives Matt Damon, a hot-shot State police detective, to risk his career to protect Frank. In Infernal Affairs (which is an hour shorter that The Departed), the characters often seemed to act largely out of a need for the plot to move forward. Here, every decision arises from the characters' environment.

All of this rich background, overlaying as it does familiar Scorsese themes of tribalism and nature of male relationships, is made complete by some outstanding performances. DiCaprio has been justly lauded for playing a character who seems to have magnets pulling him apart in every scene. Some people have knocked Nicholson for doing his usual schtick, but the theatricality of his mob boss makes sense for the character: he rules his criminal empire through dark charisma that ensures the loyalty of his awed underlings. Unlike the usual grandiose Nicholson performance, his work in The Departed lacks his trademark twinkle, that nod to the audience to let them know that he's enjoying himself as much as they're enjoying him. Costello is compelling, witty and powerful without being in any way charming. There's no knowing wink to suggest that his eyes are anything other than empty black pools.

In a way, Matt Damon's Colin Sullivan is even scarier than Costello. Unlike the mobster, Sullivan absolutely oozes charm, compulsively smoothing over every lie and crime with a smile and a slick handshake. That charm is part of the character's essential blankess. He is drawn to Costello because of Costello's power, a power he wants to be a part of, and, in time, possess himself. Sullivan's charm and blank but focused ambition suggest a self-control (and soullessness), that makes you think that he's the one character in the movie who could break out of Southie and get his hands on the levers of real power. What that, in turn, suggests about the nature of those who do rise to the top is readily apparent.

Score: 9.4