Suitable for children.
Ahhhh, no. As your head stops runing like a bell from the soundtrack, the first thing you remember about The Departed is the prodigious amounts of tomato juice. There's a hell of a lot of blood in this film, which is so unlike Scorsese, and a couple of the shots are jaw-dropping, less for the violence that for the suddenness and for their plot implications.
The second thing is that about 2/3 of the dialogue consists of f-bombs, yet still manages to get off some good lines. At a command center during an attempt to trap Nicholson, there's, shall we say, a little inter-departmental rivalry. "Who are you?" "I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy."
The last thing is that this is a terrific movie, with some fine performances, a premise that grabs you from the beginning, and pacing that never lets up.
The setup is deceptively simple: Jack Nicholson is a Boston mob boss who inserts Matt Damon as a mole into the State Police. The State Police insert Leonardo DiCaprio as a mole into Nicholson's organization. Both Damon and DiCaprio fall for the same police psychologist. So...who gets to whom first, and how many other people do they have to go through the get there?
Both Damon and DiCaprio are impressive. Damon's still the action-anti-hero, but the performance here is a little more subtle than in the Bourne films. DiCaprio is starting to grow on me as an actor. I liked him in Catch Me If You Can, and here, he's an appealing guy who wants to do the right thing, but whose life is coming apart under the strain of being undercover.
Nicholson will get raves for his performance, but he doesn't really deserve them. It's a solid job, but he's played the criminal-with-subcutaneous-currents-of-violence a couple of dozen times by now. He doesn't mail it in by any means, but it's also clear that the role's not much of a stretch for him. When he stands at the front of his guys, confronting the Chinese mob at a drop, wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night, you'd swear it was the Joker.
The only role that doesn't quite come off is the shrink. Vera Farmiga just doesn't carry off the mix of professional, vulnerable, confused, and suspicious that the role demands. She is all of those things, but the transitions aren't believable, and her character is hard to pin down as a coherent personality.
One small bonus is getting to hear Alec Baldwin praise the Patriot Act.
Make no mistake, this is a violent, violent film, unusual for noir, which relies on the threat of violence to ratchet up the tension. There are enough surprises to keep it interesting, but Scorsese never relies on coincidences. We see enough of both mob and police culture for them to be believable as well.
Enjoy, at your own peril.
