"The Departed": 4 Scoops

Martin Scorsese's The Departed drops into the current movie scene like a fireball outshining a field full of flickering matches. Running a full 149 minutes, its energy eventually flags; the ending plays as if everyone just wanted to go home. But until then The Departed moves with a fury, switching and leaping throughout.

Based on Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's superb, taut 100-minute Hong Kong action film Infernal Affairs (2002), the story follows two cops/criminals. The first, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), works for a Boston gangster, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), and operates as a mole within the police department. The second, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), is an undercover cop who poses as a member of Costello's gang. Both rats have burrowed so deeply undercover that their true identities hang by a tenuous thread; they don't even know each other. Sullivan answers only to Costello, while Costigan secretly reports to the kindly Queenan (Martin Sheen) and the cranky Dignam (Mark Wahlberg).

Nicholson nearly steals the entire film with his hilariously offensive tidbits of wisdom. Stellar performances by Damon and DiCaprio as well; one breathtaking moment simply has Sullivan and Costigan "meeting" for the first time over cell phones; they're framed exactly the same, shocked silent by fear and anticipation.