Near-Perfect Crime Classic Officially Rises From the Dead on HBO Max

2 hours ago 11

Published Oct 9, 2026, 5:05 PM EDT

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That Matt Damon guy has been in some stuff lately, namely The Odyssey, but also, he’s been in a lot of stuff for 30 years or so now. He’s great, and it’s maybe The Odyssey and some added Matt Damon-related hype that’s led to The Departed re-emerging on streaming lately as a particularly popular film, despite its age. Or maybe it’s because of its age, to some extent, since 2026 marks its 20th anniversary, and if people pay more attention to movies that are celebrating some kind of milestone, that could account for it being a hit on HBO Max recently, enough to put it within the top 10 on the streaming service.

Or, more simply, The Departed is just a great movie, and it’s always been a great movie, and it remains a pretty easy one to rewatch every few years or so without it ever really getting/feeling old. Also, Matt Damon was singled out before, but he’s just one part of what makes The Departed great, since you also have incredible performances from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio (he’s eternally popular, too), Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, and Alec Baldwin here. And then Martin Scorsese obviously directs the hell out of things, and on a screenplay front, it’s got a great movie it’s based on already: Infernal Affairs. But it manages to do things differently enough, compared to that 2002 film, to make both it and The Departed equally worth viewing, especially if you're a fan of crime and/or thriller movies.

The Story of 'The Departed'

In both Infernal Affairs and The Departed, you’ve got the central conflict involving two people who've gone undercover, in effect. The premises are shared, but to focus on The Departed, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a police academy recruit who goes undercover to infiltrate the mob. Matt Damon, on the other hand, plays someone who’s affiliated with the mob, and he’s been sent to infiltrate the police force, giving Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello information he might not otherwise be able to obtain.

As for the conflict? Both these moles start to catch on to the possibility that the other mole exists, and so they set out to expose the other, all the while trying to cover their tracks and not themselves be exposed. It’s such a winning premise that it’s hard to be angry with it being done in 2002, and then getting remade only four years later. And then The Departed is a bit more epic in scope, while Infernal Affairs is leaner and more dizzying, plus there’s the fact that Infernal Affairs is set in Hong Kong and is about the triad, while The Departed takes place in Boston and involves the Irish Mob.

What 'The Departed' Offers as a Crime Movie

Mark Wahlberg as Sean Dignam smiling mischievously in the police office in The Departed

Any attempt to rank off some of the greatest gangster movies of all time that aren’t The Godfather or The Godfather Part II will inevitably see Scorsese get mentioned at least a couple of times. Goodfellas might well be his masterpiece, and then there is something to be said for the sheer ambition of The Irishman (and the possibility that it might well be more respected as time goes on), but The Departed is his most crowd-pleasing crime film, if it can be called crowd-pleasing. Like, it’s still gritty, violent, and kind of downbeat, but there’s also undeniably entertainment value here.

What it really comes down to is The Departed being a thriller as well as a crime movie, and something that is about organized crime to some extent, but with more of an emphasis on narrative and thrills than most of Scorsese’s other gangster movies.

And a crowd-pleaser or “entertainment” by Scorsese’s standards is a little different from the broader definitions of such words. What it really comes down to is The Departed being a thriller as well as a crime movie, and something that is about organized crime to some extent, but with more of an emphasis on narrative and thrills than most of Scorsese’s other gangster movies. He did a full-on thriller with Cape Fear in 1991 (also a remake, for what it’s worth), and so The Departed sees him marrying that dark but easy-to-like approach to the thriller genre with some of the gangster stuff he’s always been renowned for tackling. The result is a movie that’s a blast, even if it’s not perfect… still, it’s near-perfect. Most directors would kill to have their best movie be as good as The Departed, and with Scorsese, maybe it cracks his top 10, but he’s done quite a bit that’s even more impressive.

The Ways 'The Departed' Still Holds Up and Feels Rewatchable

All those words already typed have been in the service of saying, more or less, “Hey, The Departed is good, and people are watching it lately, so you should as well, if you’ve somehow not seen it yet.” So, there won’t be any mention here of how it eventually wraps up. But what can be said is that even once you know where The Departed goes, and are aware of the ways it might want to surprise you, there’s still a great deal of rewatch value here, even if it’s largely because it’s great to catch instances of foreshadowing and gain an appreciation of how The Departed builds up to some of its wilder moments.

Even if you don’t really do any of that, it’s got the sort of effortless filmmaking where you still feel quite a bit by way of tension and dread, even if you know what’s coming… much like how the build-up to the Titanic hitting the iceberg is still suspenseful, even if you're watching Titanic for the 500th time. Good filmmaking is good filmmaking, and stories revisited can still be great, even with knowing what goes down. And hey, Titanic also won Best Picture at the Oscars, like The Departed, and both starred Leonardo DiCaprio. It all comes full circle, or maybe semi circle, because it would've been full circle to actually link it back to Matt Damon. Oh well. Pobody’s derfect.

The Departed is streaming on HBO Max.