Film

The Departed

Name: The Departed
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Crime
Released: 2006
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen

Scorsese remakes Hong Kong's Infernal Affairs as a Boston opera of betrayal: a mob plant rises through police ranks while an undercover cop burrows into the Irish mafia, both racing to unmask the other before someone gets found out. It's propulsive, profane, brutally funny, and ends about as mercifully as you'd expect. For anyone who likes their crime pictures loaded with dread and great actors chewing scenery with purpose.

TMDb rating

8.2

If you liked this

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Donnie Brasco1997

The undercover-cop classic that does the identity-erosion thing with quieter devastation — Pacino's aging wiseguy is heartbreaking, and the moral rot creeps rather than explodes.

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Infernal Affairs2002

It's literally the source material — same double-mole structure, same tragic architecture, entirely different cultural register and running time.

This is the Hong Kong film The Departed remakes almost beat for beat — leaner, colder, more melancholic, and arguably the superior version of the same story.

But Subtitled and stripped of the star wattage and profane humor Scorsese layered on top, which changes the whole texture.

GoodFellas1990

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But It's a rise-and-fall story rather than a duel of double agents, so the suspense engine works completely differently.

Mystic River2003

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Training Day2001

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But Compressed into one day rather than a slow-burn infiltration, so it trades complexity for velocity.

American Gangster2007

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No Country for Old Men2007

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Same DNA of undercover deception and institutional rot, but reimagined as a serialized format where the paranoia has years to fester instead of minutes.

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A documentary about the real Boston mob boss and FBI informant who inspired Jack Nicholson's Costello — stranger, sadder, and angrier than any fictionalized version.

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