10 Ways The Departed Is Martin Scorsese’s Best Gangster Movie

10 Ways The Departed Is Martin Scorsese’s Best Gangster Movie

Martin Scorsese is the greatest gangster movie director in history, and The Departed is arguably the best and most unique in his filmography.

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Martin Scorsese is a jack of all trades when it comes to genre movies, as he has directed comedies, psychological thrillers, and kids’ fantasy flicks. But no matter what he directs next, he’ll always be known for being the king of epic gangster films.

Mean Streets, Casino, Goodfellas, and most recently, The Irishman, have all cemented Scorsese as the greatest gangster director in history. But the filmmaker’s 2006 movie, The Departed, is arguably his best. The movie is unique among the director’s filmography for many reasons, as it’s his only movie with a modern-day setting and one of the few with a strong female character.

10 It’s Scorsese’s Only Movie Set In The Present Day

As the movie was released in 2006, The Departed is 15 years old at this point, and though that doesn’t actually feel too long ago, technology and life, in general, have advanced a lot since then. At the time, flip phones were the communication devices of choice, and it feels almost strange watching gangsters and FBI agents use cell phones in a movie by the iconic filmmaker.

But it’s isn’t just cell phones, the movie’s premise relies on modern wiretaps and computer filing systems, and the Boston apartments are modern too. Outside of a couple of short scenes at the beginning and end of The Irishman, The Departed marks the only time Scorsese has made a modern-day movie.

9 It Has The Best Ensemble Cast

Scorsese’s movies have always had great casts, as almost every one of his movies features either Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, or Harvey Keitel. However, although there were other actors were considered for The Departed, the trifecta of DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Jack Nicholson is unbeatable. And that doesn’t even cover the supporting cast.

Vera Farmiga has the best female role of any Scorsese outing, and the screenplay was so great that not even Mark Wahlberg could refuse a supporting role, at a time when the actor was a major star and exclusively led movies.

8 The Strong Female Character

Martin Scorsese’s movies don’t usually feature strong female characters, especially leads. Instead, the women in his movies tend to simply support their husband, who is a gangster, fraudster, or some other type of criminal. In fact, Scorsese has only made one movie about a strong female lead character before abandoning the technique, which was Boxcar Bertha all the way back in 1972. Scorsese isn’t exactly to blame for this, as all these movies are based on real-life stories and real-life people.

But in The Departed, although she isn’t the lead, Madolyn is a strong female character unlike any other in a Scorsese movie. Madolyn doesn’t stay at home cooking for her husband, as is common in Scorsese movies. She’s an established doctor. She doesn’t stay with her partner despite knowing all the horrible things he has done. She instead drops him immediately.

7 It’s Scorsese’s Most Plot-Driven Movie

When it comes to gangster movies, Martin Scorsese has a knack for focusing on characters as they try to physically and mentally navigate their way through what’s happening around them. And that’s part of why his movies usually hover around the three-hour mark.

And although DiCaprio perfectly depicts an undercover cop who is exhausted, anxious, and nauseous from his work, that isn’t what drives the movie. It’s the plot that drives the narrative, as it constantly cuts between Colin and Billy uncovering more evidence against each other. That also explains why The Departed is one of the few of the director’s gangster movies not narrated by the lead character.

6 The Plot Twists

Scorsese movies typically have intricate tracking shots and amazing, snappy dialogue, but for the most part, his narratives are fairly linear. They are biopics told from start to finish, with no gritty detail spared. There usually aren’t too many surprises, as a few people get whacked and the rest end up in jail, but The Departed subverts audiences’ expectations around every corner.

Basically, everybody gets murdered, with each death more shocking than the last, and this continues all the way until the very final minute. Not just that, but the fact that Frank, one of the most depraved mobsters in cinema, is a protected FBI informant, is one of the most heart-sinking mid-point twists there has ever been.

5 It’s The Most Suspenseful Scorsese Movie

Because it’s a plot-driven film with plenty of twists, The Departed is also the most suspenseful of all Scorsese movies. This is helped by the fact that the movie isn’t narrated by a protagonist with a peppy vernacular, and it never once tries to calm viewers’ nerves.

Taxi Driver has come the closest to The Departed’s intensity, as did the lead-up to Jimmy Hoffa’s death in The Irishman, but views are generally on edge for the full two and a half hours of the 2006 movie.

4 The Dialogue

The screenplay for The Departed, written by William Monahan, is great, but the dialogue is specifically what makes it stand out from other Scorsese movies. Every character has their own way of talking, their own vocabulary, and they say things that only they would say.

When Madolyn and Colin are on a date and sharing a brownie that’s standing vertically, Colin says, “I don’t know, if that thing moves, I’m gonna shoot it.” That’s exactly the kind of thing that Colin would say, as he’s proud of his profession and loves to make it known that he’s a cop, anytime he can, even with his dessert. As an alpha male, this joke is in line with his character and he even used his status as a high-ranking officer to get the date in the first place.

3 The Improvisation

Screenwriters don’t get enough credit for their brilliant work, with the bulk of the praise going to the director. But Monahan did deservedly win the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 79th Academy Awards. That said, there was a significant amount of improv on set too.

Scorsese loves when his actors improvise, and The Departed features the best-improvised scenes, which is mostly thanks to Jack Nicholson. It has been well documented how much the celebrated actor improvised on set, as the strap-on scene was his idea, as was acting like a rat behind DiCaprio’s back.

2 It Features Mark Wahlberg’s Best Performance

Unlike DiCaprio, Damon, Farmiga, and many other members of the cast, Mark Wahlberg is not a classically trained actor, and he basically learned and honed his craft as he went along. But not being classically trained is part of what makes his performance in The Departed so great.

Apparently, Wahlberg based his performance on cops who had arrested him when he was a teenager, one of the many behind-the-scenes facts about The Departed. The foul-mouthed alpha male Sergeant Dignam was such a joy to watch and the role helped Wahlberg earn his only Academy Award nomination for acting.

1 It’s The Only Movie That Got Scorsese An Academy Award

Not only was The Departed the movie that helped Wahlberg earn his only Oscar nomination for acting, but it was also the movie that earned Scorsese his only Best Director win. This seems hard to believe, as the filmmaker has so many classics under his belt.

When nominated for Raging Bull, the director lost out to Robert Redford for Ordinary People, and when nominated for Goodfellas, he lost to Kevin Costner for Dances With Wolves. Enough time has passed for the Academy to realize those were possibly two of its biggest mistakes, but nevertheless, it was The Departed that finally earned Scorsese that coveted award.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/why-scorsese-departed-best-gangster-movie/

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