The Departed is a 2006 crime drama directed by Martin Scorsese that tells the story of two undercover agents, Billy Costigan (a police officer infiltrating an organized crime family) and Colin Sullivan (a criminal posing as a police officer), who attempt to discover each other's identities. Set in Boston, the film explores themes of mistrust and corruption, as everyone lies and no one can be certain of anyone else's true allegiance. It won several Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Scorsese.

1. The Departed
Film Case Study
Hayat Chehab

2. The Departed
• The Departed is a 2006
American crime drama film directed
by Martin Scorsese and written by William
Monahan.
• It is a remake of the 2002 Hong
Kong film Infernal Affairs.
• The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt
Damon, Jack Nicholson, and Mark
Wahlberg, with Martin Sheen, Ray
Winstone, Vera Farmiga, Anthony
Anderson, and Alec Baldwin in supporting
roles.
• It won several awards, including four Oscars at the 79th Academy
Awards: Best Picture, Best Director (Scorsese), Best Adapted
Screenplay and Best Film Editing. Wahlberg was nominated for Best
Supporting Actor.

3. Overview
• The Departed tells the story of two undercover agents,
Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), a police officer who
infiltrates an organized crime family, and Colin Sullivan
(Matt Damon), a guy who planted as a mole within a
police organization by becoming a cop. When both sides
realize the situation, each man attempts to discover the
other's true identity before his own cover is blown. The
film is set in Boston, a city with a large Irish population.
• The two characters are loosely based on famous
gangster Whitey Bulger and corrupt FBI agent John
Connolly, who grew up with Bulger.

4. Common Theme
• Mistrust pervades The Departed’s world. Everyone is lying,
and no one can tell for sure what is going on or who makes
the decisions. The head of both the legitimate and illegitimate
organizations obsess about loyalty and security, but find it
impossible to determine the boundaries between legality and
illegality, good and evil.
• In The Departed, even the boss of the criminal organization,
Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), has trouble figuring out who
to trust. He suspects that a police mole has infiltrated his
group but can’t determine who it is. Costello decides to begin
his investigation by collecting his henchmen’s Social Security
numbers. This connoted in a world of mistrust and confusion,
people lose track of their own identities as well as the
identities of those they work with.

5. Corruption
• In The Departed everyone is corrupt, or suspected of
being so, and in time corruption becomes almost identical
with virtue. To prove himself to the bad guys, Billy has to
pretend to be kicked out of the police academy; he must
spend time in jail on fictitious charges and work closely
with the mob boss, in effect becoming a criminal while he
remains a dutiful cop. Those who seem to be corrupt may
really be good, just as those who seem good may in fact
be corrupt.
Self-preservation
• Everyone’s top priority seems to be to keep everyone
else in the dark. In The Departed, we often can’t discern
the truth from the cover-ups.

6. Organizations
• The corruption is organizational as well as personal.
Within law-enforcement agencies, interagency
competition generates corruption as state and local
police work against one another and both try to
outmanoeuvre the FBI. Even within the state police,
corruption emerges from the competition between the
undercover unit, run by a cop named Dignam (Mark
Wahlberg), and the rest of the department, run by an
official named Ellerby (Alec Baldwin).

7. Rivalry
• Both the cops and the crime family of The Departed use
violence to unmask and silence adversaries. A cop
suspected of knowing too much is flung off the top of a
building; the body of a cop who may or may not have
been an informer is dumped in the marshy Fens; and
Dignam, the chief undercover cop, sneaks into an
apartment to shoot Colin when he comes home with his
groceries.
• Additionally, in the movie, surveillance technologies and
invasions of privacy become preferred tools for
undermining rivals. At the end of the film, with the click of
a computer mouse, Colin deletes Billy’s file from police
records, erasing his identity.