20 Years Later, Matt Damon’s Ahead-of-Its-Time Crime Movie Finds New Life on Streaming

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Published Feb 9, 2026, 6:45 PM EST

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

He has been writing for Collider for over two years, and 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 to introduce audiences to a whole new world of cinema.

Swing and a miss > measured victory. Also, #JusticeForHan. (He/Him).

Who can forget Oscars host Jon Stewart pointing out that the hip-hop collective Three 6 Mafia had more Academy Awards than Martin Scorsese up until the 2006 ceremony? Despite his achievements — he's widely regarded as the greatest living filmmaker in the world — Scorsese has been notoriously overlooked by The Academy. He finally won his first directing Oscar only a year after Stewart's snide remark, but not for a movie many would classify among his finest. Scorsese was presented the prestigious honor by his peers — Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg — for the crime drama The Departed, which also won the Best Picture award. Not only was it not as widely acclaimed as some of the filmmaker's earlier classics, but it also happened to be a remake. That said, The Departed remains a crowd-pleaser and is witnessing a surge in viewership on streaming.

The movie was released in 2006 and featured an all-star cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon. The Departed followed their two characters, a criminal and a cop, as they tried to hunt down a mole in each other's organizations. The film also featured Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Vera Farmiga, and Mark Wahlberg in a career-best supporting performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. Produced on a reported budget of $90 million, The Departed grossed over $290 million worldwide. It earned positive reviews and is now sitting at a "Certified Fresh" 91% critics' score and a 94% audience score on 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."

Here's Where 'The Departed' Spiked Over the Super Bowl Weekend

According to FlixPatrol, The Departed was among the most-watched movies on the global HBO Max charts over the Super Bowl weekend, when the leaderboard was topped by M3GAN 2.0. Scorsese and DiCaprio had already partnered on the films Gangs of New York and The Aviator, and would go on to deliver the critically acclaimed hits Shutter Island and The Wolf of Wall Street. They last worked together on the epic crime movie Killers of the Flower Moon, and are set to reunite on a psychological thriller that will also feature Jennifer Lawrence.