With people circling back to Matt Damon’s filmography, The Departed remains the Damon performance to revisit first, and not only because it sits inside one of the signature American crime thrillers of the 2000s.
Scorsese takes the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs and plants it in Boston, pulling details from the Winter Hill Gang and FBI agent John Connolly. Damon’s Colin Sullivan feeds Frank Costello from inside the Massachusetts State Police, while Leonardo DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan buries himself inside Costello’s crew. That setup gives the movie its constant squeeze of pressure, paranoia, and divided loyalties.
What makes the movie so slippery is Damon. Sullivan looks polished, capable, and hungry on the surface, but underneath he’s a coward, a liar, and always a little closer to panic than he lets anyone see.
Scorsese keeps everything moving, and Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Mark Wahlberg, and Vera Farmiga all make the film meaner, funnier, and sharper around the edges.
If you’re going back through Damon’s thrillers, this one’s an easy pick: it made $291.5 million worldwide on a $90 million budget, holds a 91% score on Rotten Tomatoes according to Rotten Tomatoes and an 85 on Metacritic according to Metacritic, and won four Oscars at the 79th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, along with Golden Globe and Writers Guild of America honors.
Some people still come away favoring DiCaprio, and Wahlberg got the film’s only acting nomination. Even so, Damon’s work here has aged especially well.
You can find The Departed on digital platforms and home video.
Author: Emmanuel Pina
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