In honor of the film’s salty dialogue, I will pepper this review with some of the film’s more colorful phraseology. Deal with it bitches. One of those twisting, turning bloody crime dramas that director Martin Scorsese can do in his sleep, The Departed is fucking good.

The Departed centers on Jack Nicholson’s mob boss and the two cops doing double agent duty, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon. Leo is from Southie but trying to shirk that by joining the cops, specifically the Massachusetts State Police. Matt is also joining the cops, by way of Southie, but to help Jack from the inside.

State and local police agencies are trying to stop Jack and the Gang from continuing their evil ways of fucking, killing, stealing and the like. Leo is recruited to go way undercover, complete with a stint in the pokey and facial hair for extra street cred. There’s a pretty hilarious seen with Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg, with Mark setting the record for the most F-bombs in a three-minute scene. Ever.

So recruited as a UC, Leo spends his time playing at being a bad guy, working his way into Jack’s inner circle, and into Matt’s girlfriend’s panties.

Matt is the hardest character to believe. He’s got this perfect record, some hot shit supercop, so he’s assigned to some multi-jurisdictional task force, right out of the academy. Which is so stupid: Sheen and Marky Mark know the last time Leo went to a Sox game, but not a damn thing about Damon, who’s been Nicholson’s bitch since day one. Anyway. Matt spends most of his days in meetings with FBI and other Staties, led by Alec Baldwin.

Things come to a head as they are wont to do, with everyone trying to solve the promo “Who’s the Rat?” mystery and save their own asses. The Departed is good, messy, bad guy fun. In fact it’s surprising how Scorsese really brought the funny, and the movie is in the vein of Goodfellas, and part dark comedy as well as crime drama.

Final Snark: Oscar nods, gunpowder, testosterone, fucking entertaining shit.