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Working from the raw material of the 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, Martin Scorsese has crafted a grim, autumnal masterpiece suited to post-9/11 America. Nearly an hour longer than the original, it explores characters' backstories in detail and weaves class conflict and ethnic identity into a story that is most of all about masculinity.
The Departed's relationship to Infernal Affairs is a bit hard to define. It lifts story lines, scenes and even shots directly from the Hong Kong film, but it's more than a simple remake. Viewers familiar with the original will see a lot of developments coming, but not all. The acting here doesn't rise to the level of the original, with at least one major exception, but that comparison isn't really fair: The main characters are fundamentally different from those who filled the same roles in the first film, and these actors have a lot more to do. Where the original was spare and enigmatic, this movie is sprawling, messy, and full of blunt articulation. Finally, The Departed is a 64-year-old director's film steeped in the history of a tired and self-questioning nation, while the brightly lit Infernal Affairs is the work of a younger generation in a country on the rise.
The premise, once again, is dueling moles, one an undercover cop in the mob and the other a mob informant in the police department. Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is essentially the adopted son of crime lord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the product of a broken marriage between an upper-class mother and a working-class father with criminal relatives. Both attend the state police academy and end up straddling the law in different ways. DiCaprio gives an outstanding performance as a jittery novice in the rough world of the Irish mob. He lacks the pathos of Tony Leung Chiu-Wai in the corresponding role in Infernal Affairs, but Costigan is more than an unlucky loyal foot soldier like Leung's Chan Wing Yan. He's tormented by his dual role but also filled with a deep-seated rage that suits him well in organized crime.
As the story of the two former cadets plays out, it's just as much a movie about Costello. At 70, he's a sadistic success story who quotes John Lennon and tosses cocaine in the air like flour, but at heart he's lonely and out of his time. It's a perfect role for Nicholson, who takes it all the way and then some. Costello's age and disappointments never show as mellowing; there's no handing down of the torch or regrets for anything other than losing his murderous faculties. He's barely even bitter, just living out who he knows he is. Eric Tsang pulls off something like this in Infernal Affairs, though he doesn't get the screen time to really flesh it out. But no one else has Nicholson's history, tied into the rebellion of the late Sixties and early Seventies and its fading into the various national sieges that followed.
Scorsese doesn't work this into a crotchety condemnation of political correctness or foreign invasion. An illegal sale of microchips to the Chinese government, which spurs Costello to a string of racial slurs and a sneering lecture about how things are done "in this country," simply serves to illuminate his character. He's a man on the desperate end of masculinity's quest to make its mark, a perfect counterpoint to DiCaprio's and Damon's youthful energy. The story stomps ahead through killings and explosions, while pausing long enough with the one major female character, therapist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), to hear her take on the emotional sicknesses of men.
Scorsese's direction does the job well, not drawing too much attention to itself while filling The Departed with so much atmosphere that by the end we can almost smell the cigarette smoke and gunpowder on our clothes. In fact, the only thing that takes us out of that close air is the almost constant background music. The string of Classic Rock tunes worked well in GoodFellas, but in this present-day film it just sounds like Scorsese's record collection. The bigger flaw here is one of tone: Unlike Infernal Affairs, which had quite a range of personalities among its main characters, The Departed gives us a world made up almost entirely of salty Boston toughs. A few more notes would have made the film an even greater meditation on what it means to be a man.