The Departed is one of my favorite movies. I'm not usually into crime or gangster movies, but this lighter version doesn't have all the violence but still tells a good story with enough action and suspense to entertain.
Cross Cutting is like parallels. Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Damon) are opposites. Castigan works and earns everything. Sullivan is handed everything. Costigan is a good cop pretending to be a gangster. Sullivan is a gangster pretending to be a cop. This movies just does such a great job of pitting these two against each other and building the suspense of who will be discovered first.
This scene shows some of the juxtaposition between Costigan and Sullivan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqWJho4zSFc
What's super effect about cross cutting is that Costigan's struggle is made more admirable and heroic when contrasted with the easy life Sullivan is enjoying while really being a crook. Audiences hardly notice the techniques, but they definitely feel the effects. One scene you see Costigan in jail. The next scene is of Sullivan sipping coffee in his nice apartment. Costigan is getting beat up, watching Costello (Nicholson) kill someone. Sullivan is enjoying a dinner with his girlfriend, or getting promotions. Naturally you gravitate towards Costigan, that's no accident. It's calculated and because of it Costigan's character automatically gains admirable qualities while Sullivan's character is attached with negative qualities. This speeds up the process of giving the audience reasons to prefer one character over another. Books have time to flesh out characters, movies have to create instant connections. Cross Cutting is one way of doing this. Simply put it's a good vs. evil scenario.
Also brilliantly acted and adding to the drama is Dingam (Wahlberg). You hate him up until the point he punches Sullivan. Cross cutting scene between Dingam's treatment of the two young men. Nothing to me is more annoying than watching him mouth off to Costigan and then smile and joke with Sullivan.
The Three Acts still stand. Character establishment, we meet everyone we need to know in act one. Through cross cutting we see how Costigan and Sullivan are living and dealing with their circumstances. Act two the conflict and suspense. Notably the chase scene between Costigan and Sullivan. You know now that eventually one of them will be exposed. Act Three all that shooting, but a satisfactory ending Costigan sadly dies, but Sullivan got poetic justice in a sense.
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