Scanning through Netflix again? Can’t decide what to watch tonight? We’ve called it for you – come and get your panties in a twist over Leo and Matt Damon going head to head in Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film, The Departed. *Spoilers ahead*
It was the film that got Marty his much overdue first Academy Award for Best Director and pitted two of the biggest actors in the world against each other with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon sharing the screen for the first and only time, plus Wahlberg goes full Wahlberg. What more could you want from a film? A Hollywood icon playing a mob boss? Ok, well let’s get Jack Nicholson in there…
The film, which is a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs, follows two undercover agents: one who works for the FBI (DiCaprio) and is infiltrating the world of Irish mob boss Frank Costello (Nicholson), and another who has infiltrated the FBI at Costello’s behest (Damon). It’s tense and twisty as each side tries to eliminate the rat, with being Damon infuriatingly wicked and Leo constantly stressing us the fuck out.
Need more convincing? Or maybe you need some talking points to get your housemate/partner etc over the line on this one? Check out five reasons why you should watch The Departed below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iojhqm0JTW4
Wahlberg. Full stop.
Playing a foul-mouthed sergeant, Wahlberg offers some comic relief from the overarching anxiety of the film with his largely improvised tirades. It feels like the role the Boston native was born to play and he steals every scene which is made even more impressive by the fact that it took a lot of convincing to get him to do it:
“They sent me on a plane over the weekend to Marty’s office,” Wahlberg said to Indiewire. “I read the script again, and I was pretty angry and I said again I wasn’t going to do it. Marty told me, ‘Look at this part, look at what you get to do with all these people.’ He knows I’m from that [Boston] world and I talked to him about improvising and doing my own thing and he said, ‘Dude, you’re free to do what you want to do.’”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuYtXbzJYck
That moment…
If you’ve seen it, then you know. If you haven’t, just skip this point… The moment just when you think everything is gonna work out for Leo and that elevator dings and it all goes the opposite way. It’s the best and worst part of the movie at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axbT3cekLv0
The tunes.
As you would expect with a Scorsese film, the music is next level. There are plenty of 60s/70s classics including the Rolling Stones and John Lennon, but the major music addition is Dropkick Murphys’ rambunctious tune ‘Shipping Up To Boston’ which perfectly matches the through-the-roof testosterone levels of the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_nvQxhg9dA
The little guys in the cast.
Not only do we have two of Hollywood’s biggest heavyweights at the time in the form of Damon and DiCaprio, but the rest of the cast is incredible. Decorated British actor Ray Winstone (Mr French), Martin Sheen (Captain Queenan) and Alec Baldwin (Captain Ellerby), who are all leading men in their own right, are the less-talked-about key ingredients to this masterpiece.
Spot the ‘X’s
So apparently there’s a bunch of ‘X’s in the film that was Scorsese’s homage to the 1932 film Scarface which incorporates them when foreshadowing a characters’s death. If you’ve seen The Departed a million times, a “spot the Xs” game might add a new dimension…
