The Departed (2006) *****

Now you have to face facts at some point: Martin Scorsese is at his best when he's doing a gangster picture. We can go back to Mean Streets, through to minimal gangland influences in Raging Bull, jump forward a decade to the great Good Fellas, past Casino, and finally arrive at The Departed. It's funny looking at that list because it almost seems like not having DeNiro in his movie was why he won an Oscar.

The Departed takes place in Boston, a town that has been on the edge for two hundred years and probably will be for two hundred more. It opens with a flashback of crime boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) working a grocery store and meeting a young Colin Sullivan (played later by Matt Damon). This is where Frank becomes the young Sullivan's mentor, molding him into the perfect tool for a notorious crime boss- a mole inside the police department task force investigating Costello.

Meanwhile, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) has just graduated the police academy, attempting to shed the demons of his families past. Due to this past he's asked if he will become and informant working undercover in Costello's crew. Yes, each side has a rat planted in their pantry. Instead of a plot about committing crimes and stopping them, The Departed is actually a film about being a rat, while trying to find a rat and hoping no one busts your ass doing it.

Based on the Japanese film Infernal Affairs, Scorsese delivers another rich gangster film that doesn't follow the parameters that he himself helped set in his own crime drama film making through the years. Damon and DiCaprio don Boston accents and grow out of the babyface personas they were pigeonholed into. This is a great performance for each of them. Nicholson is Nicholson, crazy as hell and finally jumping from the romantic comedy market into his specialty- crazy son of a bitch market. Of course you have Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, and Mark Wahlberg filling out a great cast, but the one guy that gets left out when discussing this film is Ray Winstone as Mr. French. This right hand man of Costello is played with such brutality and intensity by Winston that he should have been nominated for a supporting Oscar over Wahlberg.

Now this is a Martin Scorsese picture, so it's going to be good and won the Oscar for best picture. But is it better than Taxi Driver? Is it better than Raging Bull? Is it better than Goodfellas? Each of those films were screwed at the Oscars and The Departed seems to be payback for picking the popular schlock of the era of these masterpieces (take a look at what they lost to). The Departed is a great film, but will it be a member of that holy trinity of Marty films? It might, but it will be the younger cousin to those great masterpieces.

Now don't get me wrong, it's a great movie. Just don't go into it thinking it's his best, because it's not. But Scorsese at his worst is 10x better than most director's best.