20 Years Later, Matt Damon’s 91% RT Crime Classic Is Running the Streaming Underworld

5 days ago 6

Published Mar 21, 2026, 1:40 PM EDT

Rohan Naahar is a Weekend News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he'll watch anything once.

He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.

Matt Damon couldn't hide his frustration with the constraints of streaming recently when he was promoting his thriller film The Rip, co-starring his childhood friend Ben Affleck. Damon admitted that films designed for a streaming audience typically feature heavy exposition to account for the other distractions that a viewer might encounter. However, Damon is returning to a form of filmmaking that is rarely practiced these days — a more theatrical, cinema-first form of filmmaking. This summer, the star will headline arguably his biggest movie yet, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. The epic will likely overtake his 2015 sci-fi adventure film The Martian to become his highest-grossing movie ever. During his career, Damon has worked with legends such as Francis Ford Coppola, Gus Van Sant, the Coen Brothers, Steven Spielberg, Steven Soderbergh, and more. However, one of Damon's most acclaimed hits remains his crime drama directed by Martin Scorsese, which recently witnessed a surge in viewership.

The movie was released theatrically two decades ago, and it featured a star-studded cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Mark Wahlberg, and Vera Farmiga. The movie actually ended up grossing more at the global box office than Damon's star-making blockbusters Good Will Hunting and The Bourne Identity, which grossed $225 million and $214 million worldwide, respectively. The 2006 crime drama grossed nearly $300 million worldwide against a reported budget of $90 million, emerging as Scorsese's highest-grossing hit until that point. It also remains memorable for winning the legendary filmmaker his first Best Director Oscar, in addition to winning the prestigious Best Picture honor.

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Matt Damon and Martin Scorsese's Epic Crime Movie Has Infiltrated the Streaming Charts

We're talking, of course, about The Departed — Scorsese's gripping remake of the Hong Kong hit Infernal Affairs. The movie follows DiCaprio and Damon's characters as they try to sniff out moles in the Boston Police Department and a local crime organization. The movie holds a 91% critics' score and a 94% audience score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, "Featuring outstanding work from an excellent cast, The Departed is a thoroughly engrossing gangster drama with the gritty authenticity and soupy morality we come to expect from Martin Scorsese." According to FlixPatrol, The Departed was among the most-watched movies on the domestic AMC+ chart this past week, when the leaderboard was topped by the neo-Western show Dark Winds. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.