Two men infiltrate opposite sides of the same war in South Boston, one a cop planted inside the mob, the other a mobster's man planted inside the police, in The Departed.
What is The Departed about?
In South Boston, an Irish-American crime organization led by a powerful boss operates with an unnerving reach into the police department itself, thanks to an informant who has spent years feeding information from the inside. Working against that reach, undercover officer Billy Costigan has spent his own years burying his real identity to get close to that same organization from within. As pressure mounts on both fronts, each man starts hunting for the other without knowing they are already circling someone hiding in plain sight. Martin Scorsese builds the film as a study of identity worn so long it starts to replace the person underneath it, set against a Boston where loyalty to a badge and loyalty to a neighborhood pull in opposite directions. The tension comes less from any single surprise than from the accumulating cost of living a lie in front of people who trust you completely, on both sides of the law at once.
About the cast
Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon anchor the film on opposite sides of the divide, with Jack Nicholson as the crime boss whose organization both men are entangled with. Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga and Anthony Anderson fill out a cast built around the police department and the criminal network surrounding it.
Context & significance
Directed by Martin Scorsese and released in 2006, The Departed is a United States production sitting in the Crime, Drama and Thriller genres, set in and around South Boston's Irish-American community. The film treats that setting as a specific world of neighborhood loyalty and institutional pressure rather than a generic crime backdrop, which is where much of its tension is grounded.
Watching The Departed on Ktime
K-Time streams The Departed with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so it can be watched either way depending on preference. The page is free to browse for anyone; watching the film itself only requires a free K-Time account login, on a platform built around a Farsi-first experience for its audience.