The Departed
2006 film directed by Martin Scorsese
The Departed is a 2006 neo-noir crime thriller film, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by William Monahan. A remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs, it is also loosely based on real-life people, including the Winter Hill Gang, corrupt FBI agent John Connolly and Irish-American crime boss Whitey Bulger. The film is set primarily in South Boston; Irish Mob boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) plants Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) as a spy within the Massachusetts State Police; simultaneously, the police assign undercover state trooper Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) to infiltrate Costello's mob crew. The ensemble cast also features Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Anderson and James Badge Dale.
The Departed premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre on September 26, 2006, and was released on October 6 by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States. A critical and commercial success, the film grossed $291.5 million on a $90 million budget, and received acclaim for its direction, performances (particularly of DiCaprio, Nicholson and Wahlberg), screenplay and editing. At the 79th Academy Awards, The Departed won Best Picture, Best Director for Scorsese (his only ever personal Oscar win), Best Adapted Screenplay for Monahan, and Best Editing for Thelma Schoonmaker. It also received six nominations each at the 64th Golden Globe Awards (winning one) and the 60th British Academy Film Awards, and two nominations at the 13th Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Plot
In 1980s Boston, Irish mob boss Frank Costello introduces himself to a young Colin Sullivan.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Departed” is 2006 film directed by Martin Scorsese. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Departed, film and directed, not as a finished interpretation.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q172975. VIAF identifies the subject as 311840867. The Library of Congress control number is no2007027043. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Departed” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.