Review: The Departed
History will mark this film as the one that not only showed off what a great actor Leonardo DiCaprio is now, but also what a great actor he has always been.
I expect you to be making fun of me right now, so I’ll wait for you to get your mockery out. Done? Okay. Allow me to explain:
With respect to DiCaprio, I suspect most feel as I did: That DiCaprio was a pretty boy who always wanted to act, but unfortunately really couldn’t. Most, I’m guessing, also derive the substance of their derision from his turn as the unfortunate Jack Dawson, the lost stowaway on James Cameron’s infamous Titanic. His delivery in that film was nearly as wooden as the script. After that, his portrayal of the titular Romeo in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet seemed retrospectively to be the self-indulgence of a kid who thought he was that very same pretty boy we decided he was. Even worse, it seemed like he wanted to be that guy. Then came the high-profile turd, The Beach, which offered little in the way of redemption for him (and a lot to condemn its then-star director, Danny Boyle, who had been coming off the big critical success of the excellent Trainspotting and didn’t redeem himself in my eyes until he resurrected the zombie film genre with 28 Days Later...). When Scorsese—dear, dear Martin Scorsese—started putting DiCaprio in film after film, I thought he had finally lost his mind. Why was Scorsese in bed with this talentless hack? My loathing of DiCaprio set me fairly well against Gangs of New York before I even stepped into the theater. I remember most liking the parts where Daniel Day-Lewis threatened DiCaprio’s life with large knives.
Then, some flukes: DiCaprio was surprisingly wonderful in Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, and he was actually good again in Scorsese’s The Aviator. You might think that these would change my mind about the guy, but, alas, they did not. Catch Me If You Can I wrote off as good casting; of course he was good, because he was playing himself for the most part. DiCaprio’s work in The Aviator I thought of much as I think of Tom Cruise’s work in Born on the Fourth of July: a whole lot of effort for a performance that is merely good.
All that changes with The Departed, which is itself hands down the best film I have seen all year and one of my all-time favorite Scorsese films, which puts it pretty high in my favorite films of all time, period. If Scorsese fails to win a Best Director Oscar this time out, I’m personally going to go to Kevin Costner's house and steal back an Oscar and return it to Marty. Academy, I implore you all to do the right thing this year and give Scorsese his due—and don’t you even think about giving an award to anyone involved in Flags of Our Fathers—especially Paul Haggis or Clint Eastwood—if it in any way means you fail to reward one of the best directors the world has ever seen.
That this film is brilliant is really not so much a surprise as it is just plain restorative. A trusted filmmaker fails to disappoint and instead lives up to every bit of his reputation. Not only that, but this film marks Scorsese’s return to the lives of criminals, creeps, and mobsters, which, for me, is a plus. The genre has missed him. Other noble filmmakers such as Michael Mann, who aim for the same target and sometimes get close enough that we feel happy enough spending some time with them, can only ever be the shadows of a true giant like Scorsese. There is a reason that The Sopranos is such a great show, and that reason is that it steals so hungrily from Goodfellas—a movie that never gets old and that is almost impossible to walk away from once it starts to roll.
Don’t believe me? Try it. Try starting Goodfellas and turning it off. Go ahead. (Then try watching Dances With Wolves without falling asleep or checking your watch at least twice.)
The plot is lifted from a 2002 Hong Kong film, Mou gaan dou, or Infernal Affairs. While good in its own right, the story has been adapted in the rarest of ways: The adaptation has found its own soul. Like two siblings, there is a family resemblance, but each has its own character and deep sense of self. Most remakes never achieve anything remotely close to this effect, instead looking more like pantomimes of more genuine stories.
The focus is on the attempt to bring down Nicholson’s Frank Costello, a Boston-based mafioso. The police have a mole in Costello’s organization (DiCaprio), and Costello has one in theirs (Damon). The rest is a tense cat-and-mouse between the two moles as they try to figure out the other’s identity. Not surprisingly, a lot of blood is spilled by the time the credits roll.
I had more or less assumed the worst about this film before I saw it. Not only was it a remake (too many of those these days), but the cast looked like Scorsese’s attempt to make a Steven Soderberg film. I mean, what was he going for? One Flew Over the Ocean’s Boogie Beach? It seemed off. I couldn’t picture how Jack Nicholson was going to blend with the likes of Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen (Martin Sheen!), and Alec Baldwin—and, oh yeah, Leo.
I’ve been wrong before. Perhaps the most wrong I’ve ever been was when I said that Peter Jackson (who I knew and loved from his early films, especially Braindead) was the exact wrong person to make The Lord of the Rings in a way that would have even the slightest chance of being appealing to a wide audience (I cite the lawnmower scene from the end of Braindead—how is that going to play in Kansas, I ask you?). That was the most wrong I’ve ever been, but I was nearly as wrong with my early assessment of The Departed. Every actor involved shows something new and surprising here (including a wonderful, surprising moment for Martin Sheen that I won’t spoil here), and the movie puts a great director right back on top where he ought to be.
But as for DiCaprio? Leo? The Departed puts him in the club. He now stands side-by-side with the likes of Edward Norton, Christian Bale, and, yes, Johnny Depp, who once played an undercover agent in the film Donnie Brasco and was not nearly as effective as DiCaprio is here. The Departed made me recall that—oh yeah—DiCaprio was in the beautiful What’s Eating Gilbert Grape...?, where he gave an Oscar-worthy performance as Johnny Depp’s challenged brother and stole the show from Depp in the process. I then remembered him doing well both playing the drug addict Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries and doing perhaps better facing off with De Niro in This Boy’s Life. He was also the one true standout in the otherwise lukewarm Woody Allen film Celebrity, and a revisit to Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet reveals DiCaprio solidly at work yet undermined by an atrocious performance by Claire Danes. Finally, it all comes together and becomes clear: DiCaprio has always been gifted, but his career very nearly went down with the ship in 1997. If DiCaprio is in a good film, he shines; in a bad film, he suffers like everyone else. Just like you should not hold Samuel L. Jackson’s performance in the Star Wars prequels against him, you shouldn’t hold DiCaprio’s work in Titanic against him. (Well, okay, maybe that’s not all the way true (in either case), but it covers some of the ground between here and there.)
The Departed is Leonardo DiCaprio’s return to a nearly-aborted career. It marks the first time he has managed to play someone older, wiser, and tougher than just a pretty face getting into trouble.
So if you are one of those people who might be thinking about skipping this film because—ugh of all ughs Leo is in it—don’t: Go because he is in it, and welcome back a great director and a great actor.
Welcome back The Departed.