The Departed
The idea of Martin Scorsese rocking out in an editing bay to Dropkick Murphy’s for hours on end makes me so giddy inside.
I hadn’t seen this since I was a teenager, probably 15 or 16, and I remembered thinking it was a little overhyped. Last night, I revisited it for the first time in my adult life, and, wow—I get it now.
This is Scorsese firing on all cylinders: zippy editing, magnetic camera movements, and a cast stacked with performances that are hard to ignore. William Monahan’s script (adapted from Infernal Affairs) is a masterclass in crime thrillers—twisty, sharp, and impossible to look away from. I threw it on thinking it’d be a background movie, but within minutes, I was glued to the screen, catching details I missed all those years ago.
The concept of everyone being a rat in one way or another hit differently this time. There’s a palpable paranoia that hangs over every frame, especially with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan. This might be one of Leo’s most underrated performances—quietly unraveling as he’s consumed by fear and the specter of death. Matt Damon is also phenomenal and underrated as Colin Sullivan. Watching him now, his snooty arrogance makes him so insufferable in the best way possible. It’s a side of Damon I wish we saw more often—he’s perfectly punchable here.
Then there’s Jack Nicholson, whose performance straddles the line between batshit goofy and genuinely menacing. At times, it feels like he’s in a different movie altogether, but that chaotic unpredictability works—he keeps you on edge every second he’s on screen.
Rewatching as an adult also made the story’s intricacies so much clearer. The layers of deception, the shifting allegiances—it all clicks now in a way it didn’t as a teenager. And those last 30 minutes? Absolutely wild. The twists come one after another, culminating in that elevator scene—devastating and bold, the kind of moment that cements a film’s legacy.
It’s no wonder The Departed won Best Picture. It’s endlessly rewatchable, full of humor (Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin’s banter is gold), sharp dialogue, an awesome soundtrack, and dynamic cinematography that never lets your mind wander. If you haven’t revisited it lately, I can’t recommend it enough—it’s everything you want out of a movie.
9.5/10