Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Departed Soars Up Streaming Charts as the Scorsese Classic Finds New Fans

Leonardo DiCaprio is one of those actors who’s basically done it all—except, apparently, superhero movies or sequels, which he refuses to touch. Over thirty-plus years, he’s built a resume that crosses genres and gave us a ridiculous range of characters, basically guaranteeing that if he’s in a movie, you probably remember it. If you pay attention to who keeps showing up in his movies lately, you’ll notice a pattern: DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese work together a lot. Six movies so far, and another one on the way. Honestly, there aren’t many modern actor/director pairs more celebrated than these two.

Of all their team-ups, The Departed (2006) stands out, both for the movie’s quality and for the fact that, well, it’s the one that finally got Scorsese his elusive Best Director Oscar—which, if you like weird little Hollywood quirks, is kind of wild.

The Departed: Scorsese Goes Back to His Roots

Here’s the setup: The Departed is basically Scorsese going back to gangster territory—a genre he helped define—after dabbling in it a bit with Gangs of New York (also with DiCaprio) a few years earlier. What’s different this time? The story is a remake of the Hong Kong crime movie Infernal Affairs, though with a heavy Boston accent and a cast that would make most Oscar parties jealous.

DiCaprio is joined by Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, and a couple more heavy hitters. Let’s be real; pretty much everyone in this movie is at the top of their game.

The Plot: Double Lives and Double Crosses

The story is a classic cat-and-mouse. You’ve got the Massachusetts State Police on one side and a major Boston criminal operation on the other—and both have a mole. Matt Damon’s character, Colin Sullivan, is a cop who’s secretly working for Jack Nicholson’s mob boss Frank Costello. Meanwhile, DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan is an undercover cop who’s infiltrated Costello’s crew. Each side knows there’s a leak but has no idea who’s selling them out, which leads to a suspense snowball of close calls, betrayals, and a lot of very tense conversations in dingy bars.

'The only one who can do what I do is me. Lotta people had to die for me to be me.' — Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson)

This isn’t a film where anyone gets off easy. You get redemption, maybe, but not without taking a beating first—mentally, physically, or both. There’s an endless string of double crosses, and by the end, pretty much nobody’s left standing.

Box Office and Streaming: Still Making Waves

Back when it hit theaters, The Departed raked in over $291 million, easily making it one of both Scorsese’s and DiCaprio’s biggest hits of the 2000s. Critics loved it too: It’s got a 91% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences rallied harder, giving it a 94%. Even now, the movie keeps popping back onto the most-watched lists—AMC+ had it as their #8 movie not long ago. So, yeah, the hype isn’t just nostalgia talking.

The Oscars: Where Scorsese Finally Won (on His Tenth Try)

In what has to be one of the oddest bits of Academy Awards trivia, The Departed is the movie that finally broke Martin Scorsese’s Oscar curse. He’d been nominated for Best Director nine times before, but never won until this. And out of all his films—Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull—this is the one that gets the big win. It grabbed four Oscars in total: Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture, and, obviously, Best Director. It’s still the only Scorsese film to ever snag Best Picture, which feels like the kind of trivia you only discover while falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole at 2 AM.

DiCaprio’s performance as Costigan was praised all over the place, with many saying it’s one of his most emotionally raw roles—but, for whatever reason, the Oscars didn’t nominate him for this one. Instead, he was up for Best Actor that year for Blood Diamond. Even then, Forest Whitaker won for The Last King of Scotland. Sometimes Hollywood just makes baffling choices.

Who’s Who in The Departed?

• Leonardo DiCaprio as Billy Costigan, the undercover cop stuck between a rock and a mob boss
• Matt Damon as Colin Sullivan, the police mole feeding intel to the mob
• Jack Nicholson as Frank Costello, the unpredictable Boston crime kingpin
• Mark Wahlberg as Dignam, the intensely loyal (and very sweary) State Police sergeant
• Martin Sheen as Captain Queenan, Costigan’s boss and mentor
• Vera Farmiga as Madolyn, a police psychiatrist who gets caught up in the mess
• Alec Baldwin as Ellerby, the task force chief with zero patience for anyone’s nonsense

Bottom line: The Departed is stacked with A-listers, layered with all sorts of personal and professional betrayals, and is one of those crime thrillers that actually does hold up on rewatch. If you were wondering what movie finally convinced the Academy to hand Scorsese a statue, this is it. For my money, there are bigger masterpieces in his filmography, but this one’s a hell of a ride—and clearly, people keep coming back for more.