The Departed Reviews
Total Film
This is Scorsese's Serpico, his French Connection, his Heat, and he brings the same eye for anthropological detail to the boys in blue as he does to his beloved wiseguys.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Screen International
An expertly-crafted genre thriller which stands a chance at becoming one of his biggest box office hits yet.
Top Critic[A] very entertaining, densely layered, just-short-of-fabulous melodrama.
Matt's Movie Reviews
Urban film making at its best, The Departed is a brutally violent, beautifully crafted, and incredibly well acted piece of film making that will leave you reeling.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Film and Felt
The film is superbly shot, and the rapid-fire editing and shaky camera fit the constant flux that the main characters find themselves in time and again.
Full Review
| Original Score: 59/100
CinePassion
You must understand farce before you can understand tragedy, and Scorsese understands both
Boston Phoenix
Scorsese isn't about plots; he's about people, places, and times, and until he departs from that, this film is a return to genius.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Hollywood.com
One of the year's very best and most exciting films.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Film School Rejects
Great acting aside, this film's greatest accomplishment comes from its director, whose style is remarkable and whose vision is always innovative.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
Beyond Hollywood
Scorsese has made an incredible cover version of the original, imbued with every ounce of his artistic personality transforming it into something both familiar and new.
BrandonFibbs.com
The Departed heralds Martin Scorsese's return to the top of his game and simultaneously secures for the film a place in the pantheon of the very best of American crime cinema. Welcome back to Scorsese's mean streets.
Full Review
| Original Score: 9/10
Film4
The story rattles along at such a lick there's little time to ponder the plot holes -- no mean feat in a film of this length and with so many fine actors competing for our attention.
Looking Closer
... a fantastically entertaining crime thriller, crackling with energy from beginning to end. ... But Nicholson's outrageous over-acting becomes a distraction.
| Original Score: A-
Murphy's Movie Reviews
Scorsese is clearly a master filmmaker but in my opinion, he's only phoning it in here. THE DEPARTED is a matter of been there, done that. Second tier Scorsese is still good, it just doesn't rank up there with his best work.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Big Picture Big Sound
Probably the director's most taut piece of storytelling since Goodfellas.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
What makes this a Scorsese film, and not merely a retread, is the director's use of actors, locations and energy, and its buried theme. I am fond of saying that a movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Apollo Guide
Sometimes accused of failing to harness the kinetic energy that abounds in his films, Martin Scorsese has done such a fine job of balancing the heat and the cold here.
Full Review
| Original Score: 86/100
UGO
Scorsese takes William Monahan's brilliant adaptation and completely makes it his own, resulting in not only one of the best movies of the year but also one of the best of his amazing career.
Coast (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Scorsese's treatise on honour and trust has a sprawl that's at once epic and cohesive.
EURWeb
An over-plotted, pressure-cooked crime caper directed by Martin Scorcese which touches on every classic theme imaginable.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
