The Departed

The Boston Globe's Ty Burr has produced the most incisive review of The Departed, certainly in terms of Scorsese's latest vehicle as a Boston movie. We went and caught the first matinee showing on Friday. It is a very, very fine movie. From a local vantage point, it does a good job of evoking a seemly underbelly of Boston -- Southie especially, but any of the peripheral suburbs as well -- Somerville (aka Slumerville, where I lived in 1993), Charlestown, Dorchester, and so forth. They get the accents right, which is stunningly rare in movies centered in Massachusetts. The first mistake most actors, directors, and producers make is to assume that there is one New England accent, and that is is based on that stupid trope of pahking the cah in Hahvahd Yahd. The fact is, there are many Boston accents, many New England accents, and by not playing up any one in particular, and by avoiding the "Nomahhhh!" cliche, Scorsese and his cast carry out this most basic -- but when mishandled, most jarring -- element nicely.

The acting, by a sterling cast, is stunning. Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon remind us of why not so long ago both were accliamed as setting the bar for a new generation of actors. Mark Wahlberg (always good, usually underrated), Alec Baldwin, and Martin Sheen play discernible characters with panache. Jack Nicholson is actually the most inconsistent -- when he is on he steals the show, but the problem with a Nicholson show-stealer is that at times he chews the scenery. There are a couple of scenes where he overacts so hard you almost expect him to blurt out "heeeeeeere's Johnny . . you can't handle the truth!" just out of instinct. Nonetheless, Nicholson dives into the role, and provides the film's gravitational center.

The plot centers around various arms of the policing agencies in Massachusetts, notably the cooperative but wary linkages between the Staties (the colloquial name for the Massachusetts State Police, but really that we use for any state police in New England) and the FBI. Even as the sides cooperate they keep secrets, and it is because of these interstices that individuals are able to maintain dual loyalties, with Matt damon and leonardo DiCaprio as opposite sides of the same coin, police officers bound to the state they have sworn to protect but with other agendas as well. To give away much more might needlessly complicate, but to give away more than that, and thus enough to explicate will give away central plotlines. Suffice it to say that no one is clean, everyone is tainted, the mix is combustible, the violence gritty. This is not the Boston of MIT and Harvard, of boat houses and ducklings.

There are a few jarring glitches in editing, and Scorsese could have left about fifteen minutes on the cutting room floor and added by subtraction, but The Departed marks a return to his grittier and more sure-footed form and should rank with movies such as Donnie Brasco, Goodfellas, and Casino as a classic of the organized crime genre, and with Mystic River and Good Will Hunting as great recent Boston movies. If asked, I'd give it an A-. Once the dvd comes out there might be the possibility of upward revision after a few re-watchings.