Bruce Apar’s Blog

The Departed (Warner Home Video)

Directed by Martin Scorsese (”Marty” to his friends)

An intriguing work by a popular American cinemagician who creates entertainment that both repulses and fascinates, creating a conflicted confluence that accounts for his persistent appeal across generations of moviegoers.

This latest ode to the demimonde of cops and criminals offers some tough talk, crusty acting, suspenseful scenarios and, ultimately, a curious lightness that floats into thin air compared with the director’s benchmarks: “Goodfellas,” “Raging Bull,” and his seminal work, “Mean Streets,” which introduced a gaunt and feral force of nature whose star rose so far, his name epitomizes incandescent acting: DeNiro.

What I enjoyed most about the disc is Mr. Scorsese’s insights both in his introduction of seven deleted scenes — a superior treatment of this DVD staple than in most other digitals — and in his explanation of the derivative influences that have helped define his visual language. Those would be the mean and lean and pioneering Warner Bros. gangster films of the 1930s and 1940s starring James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and the man voted the Numero Uno screen star of all time — Humphrey Bogart. Scorsese cites Scarface — the classic original, not the corny and cartoonish remake starring Al Pacino and directed by Brian DePalma that was famously parodied by Saturday Night Live — as a production so primal he pays homage to one of its conceits by playfully placing the symbol “X” in any scene where someone is killed.

The entire segment works as a handy history lesson and appreciation of the Warner litany of larceny, with their immediately recognizable lighting schemes and melodramatic mis-en-scenes.

In the film itself, the Hollywood eminence who falters when he tries too hard to revert to character acting, Jack Nicholson, typically dominates just about any scene he’s in, which is vastly entertaining if nominally credible. It’s doubtful the real-life low-life on which his character is based — a Boston Southie reprobate named Whitey Bulger — had half as much charm as smilin’ Jack. That should be “has,” since, remarkably enough, as an absorbing featurette on Bulger tells us in its epilogue, he’s still on the lam, a tacky testament to the fact that federal law enforcement was protecting him as he wreaked havoc and laid low all manner of humanity in his considerable area of influence and destruction.

In general, this is a high-value DVD collectible with lots of exciting extra material and a movie nominated as a 2006 Best Picture by the Motion Picture Academy that also is quite repeatable.