Martin Scorsese crafts a terrifically entertaining film that also manages to explore the intersection of identity and community in contemporary USA. From its opening moments, THE DEPARTED is focused on the interlocking (and overlapping) communities of American life—ethnic communities in Irish- and Italian-Americans; religious communities; professional communities in cops and criminals—and how the complexities of these communities both form and subsume individual identities like that of Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is desperate by the end of the film to rediscover who he actually is. It feels like the film owes a huge debt to The Wire in how it presents the interlocking of communities to form the tapestry of US American society. Most thrilling is how bold the filmmaking is: there’s barely a scene that goes by where Scorsese doesn’t make some minor but nonetheless exciting unconventional choice in cinematography, editing, music, or simply how his camera paints the narrative.