2008 Woodie Awards
The streets are Mean in BEANTown
Scorsese returns to the subject he knows best: Good fellas
James McGehee '08
Issue date: 10/5/06 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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Martin Scorsese breathes so deep into his camera that its lenses fog over at times. The Departed, the legendary director's latest, navigates the intertwined worlds of the Irish mob in Boston and the Massachusetts state police without a skipped beat, until the final 10 minutes when Scorsese fills the bathtub up with blood. Let's worry about the end later, though.
Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), a mobster with a beautifully vulgar sense of humor, pulls little, freckled Colin Sullivan from serving God as an altar boy to groom him for a life of organized crime. (Fallen Catholic Scorsese left the seminary, but not to pursue crime). Cut to: Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) as a trainee at the Massachusetts State Police Academy. Waiting outside for Sullivan on graduation day is Costello, with an expensive gift.
Among Sullivan's graduating class is Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio). Sullivan is the cute, freckled, always-smiling Irishman any girl would bring home to dinner. Costigan looks like he hasn't smiled in years, hasn't slept in days, and might have just walked out from a grubby Dublin bar; yet, if any girl wouldn't show him to her parents, she'd fix to sneak him in the window.
Bright, ambitious, and a good actor, Costello's mole Sullivan ascends the ranks to the Special Investigations Unit. The elite unit has one purpose: To build a case against, and then arrest, Boston's most wanted mob boss, Costello.
Costigan enters the police force, despite having a family tree with mobsters for bark, some of whom once worked with Costello. Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen), who runs the Detective Bureau, needs someone like Costigan to infiltrate Costello's gang. Along with cruel-streaked Staff Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg), Queenan arranges a set up, in which Costigan is expelled from the force and sent to jail. Therefore, when Costigan murders two mobsters from Providence and Costello takes interest in the boy, no one in the gang suspects he is a mole.
Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), a mobster with a beautifully vulgar sense of humor, pulls little, freckled Colin Sullivan from serving God as an altar boy to groom him for a life of organized crime. (Fallen Catholic Scorsese left the seminary, but not to pursue crime). Cut to: Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) as a trainee at the Massachusetts State Police Academy. Waiting outside for Sullivan on graduation day is Costello, with an expensive gift.
Among Sullivan's graduating class is Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio). Sullivan is the cute, freckled, always-smiling Irishman any girl would bring home to dinner. Costigan looks like he hasn't smiled in years, hasn't slept in days, and might have just walked out from a grubby Dublin bar; yet, if any girl wouldn't show him to her parents, she'd fix to sneak him in the window.
Bright, ambitious, and a good actor, Costello's mole Sullivan ascends the ranks to the Special Investigations Unit. The elite unit has one purpose: To build a case against, and then arrest, Boston's most wanted mob boss, Costello.
Costigan enters the police force, despite having a family tree with mobsters for bark, some of whom once worked with Costello. Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen), who runs the Detective Bureau, needs someone like Costigan to infiltrate Costello's gang. Along with cruel-streaked Staff Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg), Queenan arranges a set up, in which Costigan is expelled from the force and sent to jail. Therefore, when Costigan murders two mobsters from Providence and Costello takes interest in the boy, no one in the gang suspects he is a mole.