The Departed (2006), Martin Scorsese's competent, auteurist reworking of the Hong Kong crime-drama trilogy Internal Affairs [directed by Andrew Lau] deals aesthetically and thematically with the potential duality and mystery of individual identity. The theme reverberates for the film's American viewers due to the nation's collective uncertainty of loyalty in a post 9/11 historical context. As controversial, if not more so than the Vietnam War, the on-going United States war in Iraq that the 9/11 World Trade Center attack spawned has divided sentiments and generated comparable levels of support and objection amongst its population and has even managed to promote dialogue for both sides of the argument over whether or not the United States has the privilege to police the world.
Whether the United States is the global equivalent of a justified policeman, a sanctimonious criminal, or a muddled combination of the two is personally explored in the narrative of The Departed through the lives of two Massachusetts State Policemen, one of whom is posing as a criminal (Leonardo DiCaprio) while the other (Matt Damon) is quite genuinely integrated into mob boss, Frank Costello's (Jack Nicholson) crime syndicate. In Scorsese's opening sequence, Costello, bestowing advice unto a young Colin Sullivan, declares, “When I was your age they used to say you could become cops or criminals. What I'm saying to you is this...When you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?” In terms of war, Costello's “what's the difference?” simultaneously validates and condemns America's self-superior and noble interference in the political schemas of foreign countries by casting the nation as the amalgamation of gallant and morally negotiable intentions.
Besides parallels between the sentiments of the American public and the thematic preoccupations of the film, The Departed makes direct references to the prevailing paranoia about terrorism today and to the current and possible political agendas of the future United States. In Captain Queenan's (Martin Sheen) speech of narrative exposition to William Costigan (DiCaprio) early on, Queenan announces “We (The United States) will probably be at war with the Chinese in twenty-odd years and Costello is selling a military technology.” Special significance should be attributed to the fact that it is this particular crime, the obtaining and bartering of United States military technology, for which Costello is most vilified. The initial stakeout and sting operation performed by the Special Investigation Unit (to which the corrupt Sullivan gets promoted) is not concerned with the murders that Scorsese allows the audience to see Costello commit or the drugs being peddled by his number one, Mr. French (Ray Winstone).
Instead the focus centers on Costello's apparent betrayal of American, terrorist paranoia, namely his selling of military microprocessors. Even though the sting operation fails and Costello and his Chinese buyers appear to have made their transaction without a hitch, Scorsese directs The Departed to satisfy American patriotism by revealing that not even Costello, in his unadulterated wickedness could deliver military secrets into the hands of a foreign government. By arranging for Costello to double-cross his Chinese buyers, Scorsese serves two purposes; He maintains Costello's villainous persona while concurrently preserving America's safety from retribution, deserved or not, from a foreign threat.
Costello's importance to the narrative as a villain cannot be overstated, considering the values for which he stands, and considering that he is the antithesis of the “Serve and Protect” SIU that he has infiltrated. The Irish mob boss begins the film in voice over with his perverse interpretation of the “American Dream.” Over newsreel footage of the race riots in Boston “some years ago,” Frank Costello declares, “I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me…Twenty years after an Irishman couldn't get a fucking job, we had the presidency…No one gives it to you. You have to take it.” In the very next scene, Scorsese shows Costello in his neighborhood “shaking down” a local grocery store clerk, essentially taking “it.”
From that moment on, Costello's role in the narrative is to force his reading of the American Dream upon as many people as possible and it becomes up to those people to discover their identity within Costello's greedy interpretation. Costello alternately advises Sullivan and Costigan in his way of thinking, passing along such mantras and insights as “A man has to make his own way,” and “I haven't needed the money since I took Archie's milk money in third grade. And to tell you the truth I don't need pussy anymore either…But I like it.” Sullivan and Costigan, the respective recipients of this skewed advice, represent opposing values while sharing similar identities.
