Bob liked football well
enough — the butting of heads, the grinding contact, the
fierceness of play in the trenches — but the game he loved most was golf.
From Mark Wahlberg's controlled verbal outbursts to Martin Sheen's earnestness to Alec Baldwin's schizoid vulgarities to Leonardo Di Caprio's compassionate toughness to Ray Winstone's quasi immobile
fierceness to Jack Nicholson's beautifully pure excess, The Departed is indeed an performance - driven, fast - paced comedy of expertly timed thrills (or comedic thriller, depending on your point of view) peppered with several instances of acrobatic verbal witticisms, and topped with
enough generic clichés and predictable screw - turns to make it palatable for all audiences (yes, even those who paid money to see Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Costner's The Guardian).