The Departed

The Hong Kong hit Infernal Affairs seemed like fertile ground for a Scorsese remake. The premise—a cop undercover in the mob and the mob’s analogous mole in the police force are assigned to sniff each other out—poses a thematic cocktail of guilt, privacy and business-as-transgression with the raw potential for another GoodFellas.

The Departed isn’t at that level, but still. At times verging on a greatest-hits compilation (How many times can he use “Gimme Shelter”?), the remake turns out to be an expert gloss on material that was, in a sense, already a Scorsese homage. The movie dispenses with the original’s hackwork action and overlays a Greek-tragic gravitas, starting with a prologue in which future fake cop Colin Sullivan (Damon) is deputized as a young man by kingpin Frank Costello (Nicholson).

Suffused with a feel for Irish Boston, the film adds an element of social pathos: Sullivan rises from the working class through his secret identity, while covert cop Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) falls back to his gutter roots. Scorsese extends their moral confusion to police chief Martin Sheen and to Nicholson, never more overripe or entertaining than when brandishing a severed hand. In The Departed, Scorsese returns to his key genre—and some of his best instincts. (Opens Fri; see www.timeout.com/chicago/nowplaying for showtimes.)—Ben Kenigsberg