The Departed (2006)

RE-view! It's so exiting (to me).

GIANT SPOILER WARNING: Plot details ahead! Please do not read this if you have yet to see the movie.

When I was reading reactions to the Academy Award nominations, I was discovered a 50-50 split regarding DiCaprio. Not that he was nominated, haters, but for which performance he was nominated. At the time, I thought Blood Diamond was a pretty solid choice: the character arc was proscribed, but it worked. He made it work. The character was so far down there was nowhere to go but up, and it ended the only way it could in order to complete his character's redemption.

But then I watched The Departed again. If you haven't seen it yet, you need to stop reading and go rent it. Don't worry -- I'll still be here when you get back. Never mind the fact that DiCaprio gives Costigan the animal ferocity of a cornered rat, beady eyed and swift. Costigan's struggle for redemption is astonishing. He grasps for it any place he can get it, and DiCaprio invests his search with such desperate need that your heart pounds in ears as you wait for him to get some measure of it. When he can't save Queenan, he turns around and tries to save Costello. You can see it even when he quietly tries to correct another crew member's spelling. He's too smart for any of it, but it's far too late. This was the performance for which he should have been nominated. C'mon, he does an accent here, too.

What a wonderful world of contrasts writer/adapter Monahan and Scorsese have set up for us. Costigan and Sullivan, Costello and Queenan, even Dignam and Ellerby. Despite that, nothing's black or white, merely the shade of grey that best suits the moment. All people trying to get what they need from each other, never articulating but always asking.

This is the big, beautiful America that Scorsese must believe in to keep making movies like this. It's scary and hella-violent. Nothing's fair or even. The victories are Pyrrhic, but they are victories nonetheless. The best you can do is keep going, take chances when they come.

I'm feeling good enough about this one to drop the minus this time around. A