This review is a part of the Best Picture Project: a review of every single Academy Award winner for the Best Picture category. The Departed is the seventy ninth Best Picture winner at the 2006 Academy Awards.

Finally, Martin Scorsese got his coveted Best Director (and Best Picture) wins. For anyone saying this was a sympathetic win, really take a step back and think about what you are saying. Is The Departed as good as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, or Goodfellas? I would say no, but that’s mostly because those other three films are borderline untouchable. Look at the other nominees for Best Picture that year. Little Miss Sunshine. The Queen. Babel. Letters from Iwo Jima. All four of these contenders are great in their own right. Would you honestly say The Departed isn’t even a smidgen bit better than these films, though? Really? You want to reduce this riveting crime thriller to conspiratorial politics? That’s on you, bud.

For me, I see something else. One of the few remakes to actually do it right, The Departed is Scorsese’s Bostonian answer to Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s glorious Infernal Affairs (a stand out film in 2000’s Hong Kong cinema). At times a shot-for-shot remake, and in other instances a complete transition into westernized ideals, The Departed is evidence that Scorsese not only knows how to make a film. He also knows how cinema functions inside and out. Why did Infernal Affairs work so well? How can Scorsese create a tribute that is still his own story? Well, Scorsese equates this rat-and-rat chase (no cats in this junction) with the idea of families, legacies, and individualisms found in the North East American states. Your ghost arrives in the form of your lasting impact. Will you be known as a great cop, or as an informant rat? In the way Frank Costello equates identity being stripped when you are “facing a loaded gun”, there is no difference when you yourself are dead. Those that are alive will experience you one way. For you in this current state, nothing matters when you are six feet under.

Billy working undercover to blend in with mobsters.

There is no way I will stand for The Departed being bogged down as some sort of stupid justification for those that can’t just enjoy nice things. It is far too clever and well constructed for me to let it slide. Thelma Schoonmaker is one of cinema’s finest editors ever, and I will go on record to proclaim that her work in The Departed is one of her greatest achievements (Raging Bull still reigns supreme, but tell me The Departed isn’t also superbly edited). As for William Monahan’s adaptation of Infernal Affairs, you can still find heaps of thrills, turns, and scares strewn throughout. Toss in the most f-bombs ever found in a Best Picture winner, and you’ve got yourself an edgy crime maze full of dark humour and tons of danger.

The Departed is so viciously paced, it feels ninety minutes long (how is this two and a half hours? How?). You follow Billy Costigan (a copper in training) as he works undercover to help infiltrate the Costello mob. Frank Costello has his own rat, in the form of Colin Sullivan: a prodigy of Costello’s that has embedded himself within the police force. Neither rat knows of the other’s existence at first. When they hear about possible informant activity, they could be hearing about their own work. Slowly but surely, each rat becomes aware of the other, and The Departed goes from two disguised investigations into a nonstop chase to the death. Meanwhile, more and more vermin come from out of the woodworks, proving we were just as misled as the two rat leads.

Colin familiarizing himself within police headquarters.

Until the very last frame (where an on-the-nose symbol is either a final nail in the coffin, or the last laugh), The Departed is full throttle. The title card takes nearly half an hour to even show up on screen; the film just loves to sprint ahead, while the rest of us catch up. As a stand alone film, The Departed is simply exciting and substantial enough to make you want more. As a Scorsese picture, The Departed is proof that the king of Hollywood New Wave still has it. As a Best Picture winner, The Departed should not be disregarded for petty reasons. When a film is this explosive, this intense, and this insane, giving it a shrug because it isn’t Goodfellas is just stupid. Who cares? Just enjoy the film for what it is.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.