This weekend I had a Guinness and heard Shipping Up to Boston by the Dropkick Murphy’s at least 3 times, so I am bound by the blood of my people to complete the ritual and watch The Departed. And what a goddamn treat it was to revisit. Up that Dropkick Murphy’s play count to 5 now.
Saw this when I was 15 at Lowe’s theater in Assembly Square, which later sat dormant for a decade before becoming Assembly Row, now a shopping center with luxury apartments and an AMC. We cheered when Somerville was mentioned (“Uncle Jackie was a small time bookie who tended bar at the Vets in Somerville”) so this movie has a special place in my heart. I’d rate it a 5 for the nostalgic, hometown, ancestral element alone. But this time it gets the 5 because it absolutely kicks ass. Scorsese injects movement and a crackling energy that never stops. Monahan’s script is seemingly messy but structurally perfect. I caught more details this watch than I maybe ever have before, and I’ve seen this a ton. But the biggest praise goes to Thelma Schoonmaker, whose incredible editing allows it to not only propel forward, but sing beautifully. The assembly of this must have been a nightmare, or she just so expertly yields the chaos of the film that it appears that way.
Make no mistake, the maestro’s cooking with gas. This thing just blasts off: 8 minutes in we’re introduced to the leads and get some of the best Nicholson in the whole movie. 18 minutes in Dropkick Murphy starts blasting and Marty and Thelma seamlessly intersperse all our leads and their journeys across montages. Wahlberg has the best monologue of the movie grilling Leo. I could quote the entire thing, but I have to include the end part:
Billy Costigan: Families are always rising or falling in America, am I right?
Queenan: Who said that?
Billy Costigan: Hawthorne.
Dignam: [Dignam makes a farting sound] What’s the matter, smartass, you don’t know any fuckin’ Shakespeare?
A complex, duplicitous, up tempo script with so many fucking incredible lines, half a dozen from Dignam alone in the first 20 minutes. The supporting cast is a huge part of what makes this movie as great as it is. THE perfect Wahlberg role, a perfect Alec Baldwin role, a quietly crucial and intimidating Ray Winstone, a fatherly Martin Sheen, and Farmiga doing damn good work balancing and playing off Damon and DiCaprio.
The one lead I do want to touch on is Damon. His accent is one of the most egregious only because he’s from here and it still sounds so exaggerated. But boy is he great otherwise. One of the first roles where he gets to play a weaselly snake, the type of role I think he does best. He is charming and has some great game, but is such a smug asshole that no one really likes him. His implied impotence is such an interesting detail to include. There’s all sorts of wild choices in this, all for the better. A certain amount of anger is radiating throughout, towards trigger happy fake cops, towards religion and child abusing priests, and towards the psychopathic monsters who ruin people’s lives as if they were taking a piss, whether they’re gangsters, priests, or federal agents. Marty fucking rules.
“Francis, it’s a nation of fucking rats.”