"When I was your age, they would say you could become cops or criminals. What I'm saying is this: When you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?" So says Frank Costello, crime boss in South Boston, near the beginning of Martin Scorsese's The Departed. "What's the difference?" is what the rest of the film explores, because there is a great difference.
The film is based on the 2002 Hong Kong film, Infernal Affairs. It focuses on two freshly graduated Massachusetts State Troopers. Colin Sullivan grew up in Costello's neighborhood, where Costello became something of a surrogate father for him. He has obviously been groomed by Costello to serve as a mole inside the police, keeping him informed of investigations against him. Billy Costigan has family connections to Costello's organization, but, like his father, has always disdained the criminal element of the family. Captain Queenan sees in him a perfect candidate to infiltrate Costello's gang. Each informer is suspected to exist, but neither knows who the other one is. The goal of each is to try to identify the rat.
The two inside men are mirror images of each other. One respectable, the other shady. One trying to do good, the other helping to do evil. One is a criminal, one is seemingly upstanding. They also have similarities. Each of these two state troopers is living a lie. Each sees what he is doing as noble -- one to fight crime, one to protect his friend. Both have given up their real self to be of service to someone else. In some ways they are each victims of those willing to use them.
As their two stories intertwine the plot gets to take some interesting turns and set up some tense situations as one or the other is almost exposed. That central plot of the film is done as well as Scorsese has ever done, and gangster films are what immediately come to mind when he is mentioned. He has often used criminals to reflect on how people can act two different ways. He remembers growing up seeing people he knew were connected to the mob who always tipped their hat to a priest. The difference between outward behavior and inward being is central to many of his films.
The core of the film is a massive battle between good and evil, but neither character is absolute good or absolute evil. Much of the battle of good and evil is not between the two informers, but within both of them. Is it possible to do good by doing evil? Can doing something bad lead to a greater good -- and if so, is it worth the cost? That same battle often rages within our minds and souls as well.
While that central aspect of the film is excellent, the parts of the film around the edges are less well done. The other criminals in Costello's gang and the other state police are mostly there for window dressing. The side character in the film I found most interesting (Sgt. Dignam) is relegated to a lot of loud cursing; he is full of anger, but we never know why. Madolyn, the psychiatrist that ends up with both Costigan and Sullivan, has conflicts that are never developed.
The performances are excellent, especially Leonardo DiCaprio's Costigan -- it is his best work since his very early What's Killing Gilbert Grape and The Basketball Diaries. But like the plot, the further from the center of the film, the less stellar the performances, but that may well be because the roles are less developed.
When you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference? The difference lies in who we really are, not who we seem to be.
