departed

THE FLICK: Let’s talk about what The Departed “isn’t” before we decide what it “is.” It isn’t the best film of the year, no matter what the buzz says. I know everyone wants to give Marty an Oscar, but, let’s be honest; anything he earns this year will be the equivalent of a Lifetime Achievement Award. And it isn’t Scorsese’s best effort since Goodfellas; hell, Casino and even The Aviator had more creative pizzazz. But it “is” the most commercially successful film of his career, fitting in snuggly into a categorical genre (or the closest the director has come since Cape Fear) and reinforcing the familiar themes and off-color details that have defined his work since Mean Streets in 1973, his first studio effort. Scorsese’s self-described “European sensibility” has always kept his work from reaching the masses like his childhood inspirations, Hollywood mainstream efforts of the ‘50s and ‘60s. The director’s own films emerged through a filter of Catholic guilt and street-level brutality. He was revered by critics, absorbed by pop-culture (“You talkin’ to me?”), but never elevated to the stratospheric commercial upper-echelons of contemporaries like Spielberg, Coppola or DePalma. So it’s ironic that Scorsese is finally coming into sync with mainstream America just as his career should be waning. Not that The Departed isn’t a challenging picture - William Monahan’s script (based on the Hong Kong flick Infernal Affairs) goes out of its way to fill the story with conflicting and conflicted character motivations while editor extraordinaire Themla Schoonmaker can still cut a mean montage – but it’s a much more predictable one than the director would be made even 10 years ago. Much of this lies at the feet of Leonardo DiCaprio, whose collaborations with Scorsese seemed to bring out a more demure side of the director, while at the same time affording him the budgets to take on long-suffering dream projects like Gangs of New York. The Departed transposes Scorsese’s signature “slice-of-underworld-life” into the city within a city of South Boston, where DiCaprio plays Billy Costigan, an undercover special investigator fresh out of the Academy working to earn the trust of notorious crimelord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Meanwhile, Colin Sullivan is another Boston boy who was corrupted by Frank at an early age and now feeds his father-figure information from his role as Sergeant in the state police. The crowd-pleasing aspects of the film come from the clever machinations of Monahan’s plot, which set up Billy and Colin to find the snitch in their own respective ranks, passing like two ships in the night with both their lives depending on making the ID. But like any good Scorsese film, the devil is in the details of the world these characters inhabit. And The Departed does manage to lift itself above genre mediocrity by exploiting the underbelly of South Boston and utilizing the talent of the actors on hand, particularly minor parts inhabited by the likes of Ray Winstone and Mark Walhberg. You could make the case that The Departed made lots of money based on its big name stars alone. But it’s more likely that Scorsese and the American public have finally found a middle ground of sorts; a filmmaker delivering a compromised vision and an audience adjusting their expectations. It works. And Scorsese will probably earn his Oscar. But it’s not the sort of ugly honesty we’ve come to expect from a director who, in his prime, was capable of delivering nothing less. THE FEATURES: Although it’s bereft of a Scorsese commentary (the director’s track on the Laserdisc release of Taxi Driver was the first commentary I ever heard, and the one to which all others are measured), Warner Bros. delivers a superb two-disc set that pays due respect to the master filmmaker. Lifted from Turner Classic Movies is the feature-length Scorsese on Scorsese, which details the director’s career in his own words with a remarkable collection of footage from his feature films and documentaries. Quite honestly, I would have paid to own this separately so it’s a hell of a bonus feature. The Story of the Boston Club will be a real education for anyone not from the East Coast. Although the obvious inspiration for the film was Infernal Affairs, much of Monahan’s work incorporated the real-life case of Whitey Bulger, a particularly vicious mobster who remains #2 on the FBI’s most wanted list. Crossing Criminal Cultures takes a look at the director’s notable catalog of bad eggs and is another well-produced piece. The Deleted Scenes, however, are rather underwhelming, and Scorsese’s introductions are verbose in the extreme. A theatrical trailer wraps things up.