The first thing you notice about The Departed is what a departure it is for Martin Scorsese. Perhaps the best living American filmmaker, Scorsese often tells his tales like a biographer. We approach the main character through a stretch of his life, sometimes most of it (Goodfellas), sometimes just a piece (The Aviator). “Story” isn’t the point so much as stories; call them a string of anecdotes from fascinating people, talking about their fascinating lives. Even Gangs of New York, with its nominal revenge arc, was more about the time and place and the movements of its titular proto-governments than it was about a conventional story. The Departed is different. It’s a narrative, almost conventional in its arrangement of people and the arcs of their lives and entanglements with one another.

The second thing you notice about The Departed is that it’s funny. Savagely funny. But then, it may be hard to avoid that when you cast Jack Nicholson as the primary villain, Frank Costello. That kind of corrupt humor—or is that humorous corruption?—is Nicholson’s forté, and it’s never been put to better use than here. It is a surprise nonetheless. Scorsese’s films have become increasingly serious, to the point of being dour and almost off-putting. Not so here. In keeping with the tone, The Departed’s humor is sharp, jagged, cutting; it’s more Bill Hicks than Robin Williams.

Early in the film, Costello says that “when I was your age, they would say you could become cops or criminals. What I’m saying is this: When you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?” Testing this thesis are Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon). Sullivan is brought into Costello’s fold early in life, and works his way through training into the Massachusetts State Police in order to act as Costello’s mole on the inside. Costigan joins the force because he honestly wants to do the work, and is soon dropped inside Costello’s organization as a mole for the State Police. Sullivan, comfortable in his deceptions, is confident and likable. Costigan, hostile and angry but lacking any core affinity for deception, is an intense ticking time-bomb. The two don’t know each other, but know of each other; their desperate hunt for the mole who could expose them gives the film its tension.

And what tension it is. Every situation, every setup, every double-cross and oblique threat twists the coils tighter around both Sullivan and Costigan. Exposure means not only loss of life, but loss of everything that life is built upon, as well; perhaps their existence’s are defined only by the lies they tell others, but it’s the only thing they’ve got. Forget Sin City, this is modern noir at its finest: two people in a dangerous dance around each other, holding onto whatever shred of ethics they can while the whole house of cards crumbles underneath them. And, it seems, absolutely everyone around them is compromised. Witnessing the fates of the “honest” cops and criminals, it’s not hard to see why; anything short of compromise can mean only death. Between those two choices, it hardly matters what side you’re on. Labels cease to have any meaning.

William Monahan’s script (adapted from Alan Mak and Felix Chong’s script for Infernal Affairs) is literate, tense, hilarious, and observational. Scorsese’s control of the material and the actors’ performances bring it together. In a film absolutely choking on acting talent, it’s hard to single out any one performance. That said, this is DiCaprio’s true breakout. Many (including myself) could never quite get past his boyish looks, no matter how serious the role. No more. It would have been easy for the Costigan character to be played as a joyless one-note ball of anger, but DiCaprio gives him pathos, intelligence, and enough passion to make his extreme ends feel believable. Beset on all sides because he is perhaps the only honest man in his world; that he responds to everything with barely-controlled rage becomes the only sane response. Not that it does him any good.

Oscar talk inevitably follows the release of every Scorsese picture. Will he or won’t he finally, once and for all, win it this year? Not likely. The surface story of The Departed too closely resembles a genre picture to interest the Academy. If I had my way, Damon, DiCaprio, Nicholson, and Vera Farmiga would all have Oscar nominations, and Scorsese would finally have his day. The Departed is the best film of the year so far.