The Departed Directed by Martin Scorsese - Essay Example

The Departed focuses on the criminal element’s ability to infiltrate law enforcement at the highest and most sensitive levels of operation in order to facilitate criminal and organized crime activities. What results, as demonstrated by the film, is the obscuring of identities, priorities, and loyalties that lead to dangerous and deadly situations for undercover operatives. Actor Leonardo DeCaprio, playing the undercover good cop, has as his counterpart actor Matt Damon, playing the undercover bad guy in the police department.

DeCaprio, whose acting abilities and skills bring a superb talent and realism to the role that allows the viewer to suspend disbelief and to become engrossed in the film’s back and forth good cop versus bad cop role-playing; is, in character, reduced to the role of the neighborhood thug and thief. In the film, as in reality, men of Irish descent had two options; crime and the streets, or education and law enforcement. DeCaprio’s character opts for education and law enforcement, to move away from not just the stereotypical image of the Irish thug and hood, but the reality of it as it existed in his family.

DeCaprio’s character’s family is well known in the neighborhood and within the hierarchy of law enforcement as breeding criminals. Damon’s family, on the other hand, has a less prominent family history, but nonetheless is inducted into the Irish organized crime scene early on as a child. Damon is quickly recognized as being intelligent, capable of passing the mental and physical tests for acceptance that would give him access to the highest levels of confidence and information as a law enforcement official – with the help of Nicholson’s character’s sponsorship from the outside.

Damon, another skilled and talented actor, convincingly portrays the bad guy playing the good cop and feeds Nicholson’s character inside information with which to pull off successful crime capers by the Irish thugs and thieves. Nicholson is, as always, outstanding in his role as an Irish crime boss, and it is easy to understand how Damon’s character develops an admiration for Nicholson’s character and unwavering loyalty. Nicholson’s character is about power – Damon learns from Nicholson’s character early on, as a young boy, that the “power” man is the boss.

As the storyline goes back and forth between the undercover good cop and the undercover bad cop, the scenario could become confusing, as well as boring, rather quickly were it not for the superb actor forces of Damon and DeCaprio, who are anchored with Nicholson’s talent and character. These superb actors allow the viewer to follow what could otherwise be a confusing storyline, but getting lost becomes impossible with the viewer’s attention to aptly held by these acting greats. What does emerge, however, is the tenuous game of cat and mouse that goes on in law enforcement as men and women, like Wahlberg’s character, work to manage the information and data of special units set up to counter organized crime, which is growing more sophisticated with the use of technology, as shown in the film.

These things – the crime, the technology, the inside/outside undercover roles of deception really do go on. As demonstrated by Damon’s character and especially by DeCaprio’s character, identities have a tendency to become lost in their undercover roles. Where identities become lost, so does the law become obscured, as DeCaprio’s character becomes a witness and even legally a participant in murderous criminal activities. By the end of the film, when all the characters and even a peripheral good cop who went to the police academy with DeCaprio, are lying dead; the viewer is left to ponder and wonder about the infrastructure that holds our cities and society together.

It bids the question not whether or not “big brother is watching,” but how would we even know big brother if we met him?