The Departed sss
Martin Scorsese’s underworld thriller The Departed opens with a voice-over from its larger-than-life villain, a Boston crime lord played by Jack Nicholson who declares, “I don’t want to be a product of my environment; I want my environment to be a product of me.” It’s the most personal statement in this highly commercial movie: Scorsese’s most popular and critically acclaimed films have defined the violent urban drama (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, GoodFellas), but through a series of ambitious and eclectic projects he’s resisted being defined by it himself (The Last Temptation of Christ, The Age of Innocence, Kundun). One needn’t be a ruthless mobster or a restless film director to understand these antithetical urges–we all yearn to belong somewhere, but that sense of belonging always exacts a price, usually in the form of allegiance. If ever a Scorsese film was one for the fans, The Departed is it. You can just imagine him lining up the next head-splat gunshot scene, muttering, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
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A remake of the 2002 Hong Kong cult hit Infernal Affairs, The Departed transplants the action to South Boston, but the location doesn’t really matter; the two operative cultures here are the state police and a local mob run by the monstrous old-timer Frank Costello (Nicholson). The complicated plot involves two young spies, each groomed for years to infiltrate the opposing side. Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), a promising but volatile young cadet with family ties to Costello, is recruited by the upstanding Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) for a years-long undercover mission: he’ll be convicted of felony assault and expelled from the force, and after serving a prison term he’ll work his way into Costello’s gang. But long before this plot is hatched, Costello is positioning his own rat: Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), a loyal kid from the neighborhood who becomes a state trooper and wins an assignment to a special investigative unit on organized crime. Neither spy knows the other’s identity, and as each settles into his secret life he begins to lose track of himself.
The Last King of Scotland also tells the story of a young man who falls under the sway of a charismatic leader–in this case Idi Amin, the brutal dictator who terrorized Uganda in the 70s. The compelling Glaswegian actor James McAvoy (Rory O’Shea Was Here, The Chronicles of Narnia) plays Nicholas Garrigan, a fictional Scotsman with a newly minted medical degree whose taste for adventure and resentment of his father, a bourgeois physician, propel him to Uganda in 1971. He works briefly at a small clinic but soon grabs a more prestigious post: personal physician to Amin, who has just staged a successful coup against President Milton Obote. Forest Whitaker gives a titanic performance as the general–by turns charming and sinister, vulnerable and vengeful–and as he seduces the naive young man into his murderous regime, director Kevin Macdonald unpacks the ignorance and arrogance that still characterize the West’s attitude toward Africa.
