MOVIE REVIEW-THE DEPARTED...

"You accuse me once, I put up with it. You accuse me twice... I quit. You pressure me to fear for my life and I will put a fucking bullet in your head as if you were anybody else. Okay?"

I was absolutely nowhere near understanding the movie with my sister consistently insisting that we watched another movie.

‘If this guy utters the f-word in his next sentence too, I’m gonna f-ing kill him. And you better stop watching this movie.” My peace-loving and non-violent sister threateningly said.

Sure enough, the f-word was uttered twice in the next sentence. Too much for her to handle, my sister left me to watch the movie all on my own, because the steady stream of f-words no longer unnerved me.

                                                                              While the use of only one swear word constantly  in the movie by all other characters other than the delightfully creative Sergeant Dignam does not signify how creative the dialogue writer was, the very thing that made me continue watching the movie were the ‘epic’ dialogues. Sample this, at the very beginning of the movie:

                                     “ ...They would say we could become cops or criminals.

                                                When you are facing the gun. What's the difference?”

And now imagine it being uttered by Jack Nicholson, who plays Costello, the ‘big-daddy’, the Irish Mobster so elegantly cruel and majestically threatening. And with all the background music, the camera angles, the flashbacks meaningfully interspread between the sequences, and you are so thrilled you will want to watch the movie even if you are no fan of crime thrillers.

                                         So here’s the plot summary : There’s this big daddy, there’s his protege (if you may call him one) Collin Sullivan (Matt Damon) who is (unsuspected by anyone)  the mobster’s mole in the Massachusetts State Police and there’s Bill Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) who, owing to his criminal background, is made the undercover agent for SIU (Special Investigations Unit). Costigan goes on to become a member of Costello’s gang, while Sullivan, the blue-eyed boy of his colleagues and seniors, as a detective for SIU, he is made to find himself, i.e., the ‘mole’ inside the police department, while he secretly helps find Costello the ‘rat’ in his circle. The rest of the story is how both of them discover each other’s identities. Oh, and there’s Captain Queenan and Sergeant Dignam at SIU, who put Costigan to tail Costello and there’s the psychiatrist Madolyn who dates Sullivan and falls for Costigan (something like that).

                                                                              

STAR CAST WITH DIRECTOR MARTIN SCORSESE

                                                                  While most of the characters do justice to their parts, there are some which stay in your mind even after the movie. You see DiCaprio shaking with anger, mouthing his words with ill-concealed fury when he is harshly interrogated by Queenan and Dignam. You see him so vulnerable,so sensitive, when he browses through the pictures of the man he saw being killed in front of his eyes by Costello’s henchmen, and you see him disgusted when he realizes that this was how the world saw him : a murderer, a criminal. You see the swagger in Damon’s walks as he openly flirts with the women in his office (with the ‘air of scumbag entitlement’) who are so in awe of him. And of course, there’s this no-nonsense Sergeant Dignam who can never leave his quirky, sarcastic, insulting ways of treating his subordinates,  but diligently does his duty too.

                                                                                       I do not claim I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. You need to put up with all of the violence, you have to concentrate for the movie to make sense to you. You will definitely not have a smile plastered on your face after you’re done watching the movie, and neither will the storyline have a very profound impact on you. But there’s this awesomeness that will grip you, which is not artificial and forced into the movie. The movie is worth a watch for the superlative performances and the ‘awesomeness’.

                                                                                                          BY-- ANAMIKA AGRAWAL