Daily Blague

The Departed is not a film about which one can say very much in advance without risking spoilers. You might say that it lacks an expository opening; the wheels of inexorable clash are grinding from the very beginning. In no time at all, a gang leader has a mole working for him in the State Police, while the State Police have planted a mole in his operation. Both moles are very smart young men, and one of them is also ruthlessly determined to survive.

There is a lot of blood and gunfire, with double-crossing picking up whenever guns are holstered. There are some anxiously beautiful scenes with a character played by Vera Farmiga, whose career ought to get a nice boost - although she's not called upon for anything like the extremity of Running Scared. Jack Nicholson is blatantly unattractive and convincingly deadly. As he did in Syriana, Matt Damon packs his physical intensity into a series of sharp suits; when he's dressed for the weekend, his coiled menace vanishes. Leonardo di Caprio has certainly grown up! He delivers his lines with total authority. Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, and Ray Winstone enrich the proceedings. Martin Scorsese knows exactly what he is doing and how to do it. His is the cinema of knowing what to shoot - where the personal drama that will pre-empt your nervous system lies - and it wastes no time on incidentals. As a result, The Departed feels taut even though it last for nearly two and a half hours.

Prepare to stagger out of the theatre. Remember what it was like, after Goodfellas?