The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese, was released in 2006 and is considered one of the best movies of that year. It’s one of manygangster pictures by Scorsese, but despite its critical acclaim,it was recently singled out for its inaccurate portrayalof certain criminal details. In a recentInsidervideo,Jimmy Tsui, a former member of the notorious criminal gangsSun Yee On in Hong Kong and Tung On in New York City, broke down one scene in the movie where Jack Nicholson’s character, Frank Costello, leads his crew in negotiations with Chinese criminals to sell stolen microprocessors. He ultimately gave it an accuracy score of five out of 10, and here’s why.
The scene begins with something that Nicholson’s character even points out to be ridiculous — a member of the Chinese gang brings a machine gun to their deal. “Why [would] you carry a machine gun?“asked Tsui. “Only when you start a war would you carry a machine gun. Hong Kong triad, you can think of as a business. Anything which is profitable, they will do it. So they don’t care who they [are] dealing with as long as it’s of interest. I heard of working with the Mexican cartel, the Italian mafia, the Thai mafia, Japan’s Yakuza, butI’ve never heard of the Irish mafia before.”
The Departed
Next, the scene features an interpreter relaying the words of Nicholson’s character tothe Chinese gang’slead representative. Tsui found this scene to be very inaccurate, specifically because of how the interpretation goes down. “Okay honestly,I never have heard of having an interpreter do this. Just like I’ve seen before, dealing with Thailand’s people, [you] find someone who can speak Thai. With Japanese people, find someone who can speak Japanese. We are not going to hire someone to [be] the interpreter and doing this thing,” said Tsui, who added:
“With a Triad member dealing with some other group, and someone [like Jack Nicholson’s character] gets this kind of behavior and attitude, I think I go to quit.I go turn around, cancel it. We are doing business. We are not fighting each other.There’s one bigger and there’s no one higher.”
“And doing this kind of deal, [it’s] only in the movies. They try to buy microprocessors from them. How are you going to prove that it’s real or not? In Mainland China, they have a lot of counterfeit, any part, like watches, suits, sneakers, jewelry. If they want to buy a product,why didn’t they just make a counterfeit?It’s a lot cheaper and easier. For this movie, I’m going to rate it five.In reality, it’s not going to happen.”
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How 2002’s Internal Affairs Compares to The Departed in Terms Of Realism
Jimmy Tsui went on to assess the realism ofInternal Affairs,the Chinese movie thatThe Departedis based on. He would say that while the scene he reviewed wasn’t completely realistic, it was a lot closer to what a real scenario like this feels like,ultimately giving the scene an eight out of 10. The only part in the scene he took umbrage with is one of the criminals shouting in public that they have “the goods.”
Despite its lack of utter realism, Scorsese’s 2006 film was a big success at the box office. The movie generated $291 million on a $90 million budget. The film reached the peak of critical acclaim, garnering five Oscar nominations and netting four awards, including Best Picture and Best Director in 2007. It’s another in the long line of classic Martin Scorsese films, just adding to his legendary resume. You can watch it on AMC+ through the link below or rent it on digital platforms likeApple TV+. Meanwhile,Internal Affairsis streaming on Max, and the trilogy is part of a new 4K UHD Criterion Collection box set.
Watch The Departed
