Departed, The (Blu-ray) (2006)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Additional Footage-Additional Scenes with Introductions by Director Martin Scor Featurette-Stranger Than Fiction: The True Story of Whitey Bugler, Sout Featurette-Crossing Criminal Cultures: How Little Italy’s Crime and Vio Theatrical Trailer Web Links
Rating
Year Of Production	2006
Running Time	151:19
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Martin Scorsese
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Leonardo DiCaprio Matt Damon Jack Nicholson Mark Wahlberg Martin Sheen Ray Winstone
Case	?
RPI	$44.95	Music	Howard Shore

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) English Linear PCM 48/24 5.1 (4608Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired French Spanish	Smoking	Yes, plenty
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The Departed has been an outstanding critical and commercial success. For example, earlier this year, the film gained recognition when it won Best Film at the Oscars, and notably, Martin Scorsese won his first Oscar for Directing, after six previous nominations. It has become Scorsese's biggest box office hit of his long career, and has since become one of the highest selling, high-definition discs on either format. The Departed is an examination of conscience and guilt. The story for The Departed bristles with a complex web of characters, navigating a dark, moral labyrinth. As with Goodfellas and Casino, The Departed is another searing morality tale from Scorsese, this time focussing on scurrying rats aboard sinking ships.

    Originally studying to be a Catholic Priest, Scorsese left the Seminary in the 1950s to study film-making at New York University. He recently famously made the comment: "My whole life has been religion and movies - that's it!" With a directing career beginning at the end of the 1950s, some of Scorsese's more notable films include Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995), Kundun (1997), Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), and The Departed (2006).

    Scorsese's films tend to be set in the dark under-belly of New York, often featuring characters and locations of his home town of Little Italy, New York. His movies often focus on anti-social, loner protagonists, struggling with the difficult circumstances that they find themselves in. Scorsese has teamed up with actor Robert De Niro eight times, and for both of them, these tend to be their better films. Other actors who shine under Scorsese's direction include Harvey Keitel, Joe Pesci, and more recently, Leonardo DiCaprio.

    Scorsese's far-reaching influence on other writer/directors over the last 30 years is obvious with the constant referencing and imitating of his work. Along with Francis Ford Coppola, he has helped define what a modern gangster movie should look and feel like, and along with Woody Allen, Scorsese has helped define New York's image in popular culture and film throughout the twentieth century.

    With The Departed, Scorsese has teamed up with Kingdom of Heaven screenwriter, William Monahan (who was rewarded with the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay), to rework Siu Fai Mak and Felix Chong’s script for the Hong Kong film, Mou Gaan Dou (Infernal Affairs) (2002).

    In doing so, The Departed, as with Scorsese’s other remake, Cape Fear (1991), has become a perfect example of why film remakes shouldn't be so easily dismissed by critics or audiences alike. The original R-Rated Hong Kong film was gritty and entertaining, but this remake has come to be considered a modern film masterpiece, many claiming it to be Scoresese’s best work since Goodfellas (1990).

    With The Departed, Scorsese and Monahan have retained the same basic plot structure of Infernal Affairs, but the script has been given the Scorsese treatment. The characters are now given a much deeper scope, and the pacing of the plot shifts from action-thriller to suspense-crime drama, allowing a greater space to explore some of the themes and moral questions raised by the various character and story situations.

    In the story, which opens in South Boston "some years ago", William 'Billy' Costigan Jr (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) are both members of Boston's Irish-American community. In Boston, the Irish fill the ranks of both the cops and the criminals; And the local 'Southie' Irish Mob is run by the ruthless gangster, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson).

    The rough and tumble, Costigan seeks to escape his family’s shady past, and he enrols in the police academy with the goal of becoming a state trooper. Meanwhile, the seemingly clean cut Sullivan also wants to join the police, but for a very different reason - he is to become Costello's mole within the police department.

    Sullivan is shrewd and calculating, yet is thoroughly charming when he is required to be. He quickly becomes a rising star with the State Police's special investigative unit, headed by the pushy and driven Capt. Ellerby (Alec Baldwin).

    Meanwhile, due to his, and his family’s dirty past, Costigan’s appointment as a trooper is blocked by Capt. Queenan (Martin Sheen) and SSgt. Dignam (Mark Wahlberg). They instead see his potential for deep-undercover work, and they recruit him as a mole. He is to infiltrate Costello's mob as they wish to bring Costello to justice.

    Thus begins the cat and mouse, high-stakes game, with Costigan carrying out espionage for the police, while Sullivan does the same for the mob. Soon both moles discover there are leaks, but neither is aware of who they are coming from. Furthermore, both are challenged when, after several years, both impostors come to identify with, and seek the approval of, the men they are deceiving.

In an interview, Scorsese described Costello as "Beyond God. . . He's got all the money, he's got all the drugs, but he's still not satisfied and he opens himself up to be taken in by his sons." The father-son relationship has been a recurring theme in many Scorsese films, dating back to Raging Bull. In the case of The Departed, the sons in question are surrogate ones. Both of the warring groups - Queenan’s police unit and Costello’s mobsters - claim that they are a kind of family - a community of people who, in theory, look after one another. Indeed, both Queenan and Costello are paternal figures in Costigan and Sullivan's lives, but it is also clear to us that neither 'father' will be able to fulfil their aspirations. Not only will both groups fail to protect their communities from their enemy, but both are also being betrayed from within, by those closest to them. Early in the film it is flagged that the results will be a bloody - with both 'sons' desperately seeking redemption from their seemingly inevitable fates.

    Understandably, both Costigan and Sullivan gravitate toward the pretty police psychologist, Madolyn (Vera Farmiga). In becoming emotionally involved with both of them, her loyalty will also tested, although not to her employer, but to her clients.

    The acting talent in The Departed is excellent. Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon both provide realistic and riveting performances. Both actors convey their agonizing inner conflicts in a manner that we can feel it, but not see it. They never call attention to their deceptions. DiCaprio improves with every outing under Scorsese's direction, and he provides an angst-ridden, tormented, and desperate character, living on the edge. Meanwhile, Damon’s seemingly squeaky-clean, greedy, and ambitious character, brings a coldness and callousness to the role that is often unnerving and tragic.

    Notably, as Costello, Jack Nicholson makes a wonderful villain as always, and also gets to deliver some of the film’s best lines, such as when he is narrating the film's opening scenes, which are set against a backdrop of news footage of the 1974 South Boston anti-busing protests and violence: "I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me . . . If I got one thing against the black chappies, it's this: No one gives it to you. You have to take it." Or when he asks a guy in a bar about his sickly mother: "She's on her way out," says the barfly. "So are we all," Costello fires back. "Act accordingly."

    Fiercely intelligent and clearly well-educated, Costello openly mocks religion and questions the paradoxical society around him. His time as a mobster has given him a skewed outlook on life, and he often launches into philosophical rants, often self-serving, to justify his choices and actions, such as "when I was your age, they would say we could become cops or criminals. Today what I'm saying to you is: When you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?" Or as Costello simply says to a young Sullivan, "non serviam" (latin for "I will not serve"), which from literature was spoken by both the Devil, and by the character Dedalus in Joyce's A Potrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which refers to Dedalus' choice to follow his artistic pursuits, rather than the Church.

    The film also boasts an excellent supporting cast, with the likes of Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, and Ray Winstone all turning in brilliant performances.

    The talent behind the camera is also first rate, and as with most Scorsese films, the production quality is sublime. The direction, cinematography, editing, lighting, costumes, art direction, sound recording, and music are all outstanding. For example, Michael Ballhaus' beautiful, and at times intense, cinematography stands out in particular, and Scorsese’s long-time editor, Thelma Schoomaker again beautifully edits the film, for which she also won an Oscar.

    The Departed is often confronting, cold, hard, and bloody, but it is certainly not as violent as some of Scorsese's other films. Despite being a searing morality tale, it’s also almost entirely unsympathetic, unsentimental, and cynical. It is a modern epic, crime saga that returns to Scorsese’s familiar themes of moral choice, family, and betrayal. It also returns to Scorsese’s fascination with ethnic tribalism and gangland loyalty. As with many of his past central characters, they are loners, but this time, they are surviving in the murky waters of organised crime, corruption, double agents, moles, and rats - scurrying rats aboard sinking ships.

Video

    The high definition transfer accurately reflects the film's original print, and as I have come to expect, it is noticeably sharper and far more detailed than the DVD's transfer.

    The film has an intentional, slightly-grainy, textured look, which suits the gritty story well. The transfer is beautifully presented in high definition, having been expertly authored in 1920 x 1080p. It has been encoded using VC-1 compression, and presented in a widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1, in a native 16x9 frame. This is the film's original theatrical ratio.

    As one should expect with a high definition transfer, the sharpness of the image is excellent. For example, consider the perfect delineation of the many rows of Venetian blinds running along the side of a wall at 9:13, or the fine detail of the pattern of Costello's suit at 33:31. The sharpness of the BD's transfer is noticeably better than that of the DVD's. For example, with the high definition transfer, consider the fine detail now clearly visible on the books stacked on the shelves in the background at 51:24, and the sharp details now visible in the boats moored at the marina at 71:27, or consider the texture of the brick work at 73:07. As with the DVD, the black level is excellent throughout with true, deep blacks. The shadow detail is also excellent, as can be seen inside the cinema at 87:25, or inside the car at night at 120:37.

    The film's overall production design is fantastic. Colour is used strongly throughout, and as with the DVD, the BD accurately reflects the often subdued colour palette of the source material. For example, some sets are almost monochromatic, such as the washed out, antiseptic grey and metallic tones of Sullivan's soulless apartment at 70:30, contrasted with the warm, homely orange hues of Madolyn's apartment at 80:26. The skin tones are accurate.

    The BD's transfer has an average bit rate lower than what I have seen on other BDs that I have reviewed. It ranges between 15-20 Mbps, compared to 25-30 Mbps. While the image is often intentionally grainy, there are no problems with MPEG artefacts, such as pixelization. There are also no problems with Film-To-Video Artefacts, such as aliasing or telecine wobble, or with film artefacts.

    English, French, and Spanish subtitle streams are included. The English ones are accurate.

    This is a BD-50 (50 GB dual-layer disc). The feature is divided into 37 chapters.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    As one would expect from a Scorsese film, the movie has a brilliant sound design, which in turn translates into a great home theatre experience. As a dialogue-heavy film, The Departed is often front heavy in its approach, yet it retains an excellent and enveloping surround sound experience, albeit subtle at times. Overall, the BD's audio is wonderful, and again there is a noticeable improvement over the DVD, which only had the option of Dolby Digital 5.1 encoded at 384Kb/s.

     The Departed was originally released in the theatres with dts, SDDS, and Dolby Digital audio. The BD offers four audio options for the feature: An  immersive English Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, encoded at 640 Kbps, English Linear PCM audio encoded at 4.6 Mbps, French Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, encoded at 640 Kbps, and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, also encoded at 640 Kbps. Both the English surround audio options are magnificent in their clarity and range, but I particularly enjoyed the Linear PCM audio, which sounded fuller and deeper.

    As mentioned above, the BD's Linear Pulse Code Modulation (Linear PCM) audio is encoded at 4.6 Mbps. Linear PCM is not necessarily lossless, but the higher the sampling-rate and the bit-depth, the closer the LPCM audio is to the original recording. Although LPCM is supported by the DVD standard, it is very rarely used because it requires such a high bit rate, which takes up valuable disc space. But with dual-layer BD's enjoying 50 GB of disc space, movies on BD can take advantage of uncompressed PCM as an audio option.

    Despite all the extensive use of ADR, the dialogue quality and audio sync are excellent.

    The original music is credited to Howard Shore, who also provided memorable scores for films such as The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Single White Female (1992), Se7en (1995), Cop Land (1997), The Lord of the Rings (2001), and The Aviator (2004). But perhaps the most notable aspect of the soundtrack is the excellent song selection. For the third time Scorsese has used the Rolling Stones' iconic Gimme Shelter, as he did in Goodfellas and Casino. He also uses a cover of Pink Floyd's evocative Comfortably Numb, and The Dropkick Murphys' raucous, I'm Shipping Up to Boston.

    As with the DVD, the surround presence and activity is often subtle, but wonderful, and it adds a lot to the film, in terms of giving viewers a far more atmospheric experience. Apart from supporting many of the surround effects such as the many gun battles, and the score - especially the songs which burst to life, the rear speakers are often used to provide subtle ambience, such as the rain. As I have noticed with other BDs, there is also a very noticeable improvement in the clarity of the sound in the rear speakers with the LPCM option, for example, consider the scene at 24:25, when a door opens and the background office ambience can be heard. With the LPCM option, the radio playing in the background on someone's desk becomes a clearly defined sound. Whereas, with the DVD, it is lost as part of the blur of background noise.

    The film boasts a wonderful LFE track, and the subwoofer is utilised very effectively throughout.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The DVD was originally released as a two-disc Special Edition. The Blu-ray disc includes all the extras from the two-disc DVD on the one 50 GB BD. Interestingly, the extras relate more to the inspiration for the film, rather than the usual behind-the-scenes, making of featurettes, or marketing fluff.

Floating Pop-Up Menu

    As with other BDs, the menu can be accessed while the film is playing.

Stranger Than Fiction: The True Story of Whitey Bulger, Southie And The Departed (21:07)

   This featurette is described as "Gritty documentary about the history of the South Boston mob and its nefarious relationship with the FBI". While heavily based on the Hong Kong film, Infernal Affairs, Director Scorsese and Screenwriter Monahan also found inspiration for their re-setting of The Departed  with the life of real-life Southie-mobster, James "Whitey" Bulger. The featurette includes many interview snippets with cast and crew, and with relevant people from South Boston's colourful past.

Crossing Criminal Cultures (24:03)

    Featuring some clips from this film, and some of Scorsese's other gangster films, this featurette looks at Scorsese's fascination with the criminal underworld. Interestingly, in his interview Scorsese mentions that only five of his twenty or so films are gangster films, "but they get a lot of attention". Scorsese also discusses his childhood in Little Italy, New York, and the gangster films that influence him in his youth, such as Little Caesar, White Heat, Scarface, and Public Enemy.

Additional Footage (19:24)

    Deleted Scenes with introductions by Director Martin Scorsese:

• Colin And Ballistics Instructor
• Billy And Drill Instructor
• Flashback - Billy's Father
• Billy Smokes And Thinks
• Ellerby Press Conference
• Ellerby Questions Colin (Extended Scene)
• Billy At Shoreline
• Delahunt And Billy (Extended Scene)
• Colin Debriefed About Costello

Theatrical Trailer (2:26)

    Presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced, with Dolby Digital Stereo audio (192 kbps).

Web-Link

    For the latest on Warner Blu-ray discs, click on www.wbhidef.com

    In terms of content, this appears to be the same BD as was released in the US. It even has the US anti-piracy splash screen and the US R-Rating appear when the BD is loaded (even though the film is only rated MA in Australia).

    The Departed has also been released on HD-DVD, with an identical 1080p/VC-1 video transfer, and identical extras. The difference between the two formats is in the audio options: While the 30 GB HD-DVD has lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio, the 50 GB Blu-ray disc has uncompressed Linear PCM 5.1 audio.

    The Departed was reportedly the first high definition movie to sell (not ship) 100,000 copies in the first 90 days of its release. As now the only major studio supporting both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, Warner issued a press statement claiming: "It's no accident that Warner is the first studio to reach this benchmark. We owe this success to a combination of great content and our decision to support both high definition formats... By releasing titles on HD DVD and Blu-ray, Warner Home Video not only increases our potential audience reach, but also offers consumers assurance that regardless of the format they choose they can enjoy our movies." A worthy sentiment, one can only imagine how many more high definition copies of Casino Royale (Blu-ray exclusive) or Transformers (HD-DVD exclusive) would be sold if the major studios backed both formats, and let the consumers decide with their wallets who wins the format war.

    As mentioned above, there is also a single-disc and two-disc Special Edition DVD. The latter has identical extras to the BD and HD-DVD.

    The Departed is one of Scorsese's best films, and one of the best American films of recent years. It is also an excellent high definition disc.

The video quality is a little grainy, but accurately reflects the source material.

The audio quality is excellent, and very atmospheric.

The extras are genuine and interesting.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall