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Trust No One
Mar. 14th, 2026 02:01 pmSo I watched The Departed yesterday.
(Spoilers following for The Departed and also The Conversation.)
This may be a touch ‘guy who’s only seen Boss Baby watching his second movie’ of me, but in that whole mess of snitches and traitors and lies I couldn’t help being reminded of The Conversation—another film about how, no matter how miserable it is, you can never ever let your guard down because none of your secrets are ever truly secret. One of my favourite scenes is the one that most clearly illustrates this point: the protagonist, surveillance expert Harry Caul, has just had his lover—whom he refused to tell any personal details about himself—run out on him. In a quiet corner at a party, he details the situation to a woman and asks her what she would do if a man was that reticent with her. Harry’s crushing paranoia (understandable in itself, given his firsthand knowledge of how easy it is to spy on people) extends to a total emotional lockdown; this is the closest he ever gets to soul-baring, the first and last time he will display even a tiny corner of himself to any other living person. Immediately after, it turns out that entire conversation was recorded, and all his friends at the party have an uproarious laugh at his expense as it's played back for public entertainment.
It’s that sense of kick-in-the-teeth betrayal that I like in The Departed. The world is a pit of vipers; everyone is always deceiving everyone else, usually in the most devastating way possible. (Dr. Madolyn Madden, pretty much the only important character who is neither cop nor criminal, is still in a way playing both sides; a cheater and a liar “to keep an even keel.” As a certain television doctor would put it, everybody lies.) Both moles, Billy and Colin, are the most trusted members of the organisations they are respectively betraying: criminal informant Colin is the one chosen to hunt down the criminal informant in the state police, undercover cop Billy is the one who is given Costello’s top-secret evidence. Towards the end of the film a bunch of Costello’s most trusted criminals are revealed to be cops and a bunch of cops are revealed to be secretly criminals. Costello says it himself, unintentionally prophetic: cop or criminal, what’s the difference? Everybody lies. Everybody snitches. Everybody snitches on everybody else to everybody else.
Which brings us to the question: what the fuck was the point of all that?
At the end of The Conversation, Ann and Mark (the couple whose titular conversation was spied on) have successfully murdered her husband and gotten off scot free. They, at least, will live happily ever after. By the time credits roll on The Departed, who has gotten anything of value, let alone what they might want? Both our main characters’ stories end with them being unceremoniously shot in the face. Billy’s profile in the police database is deleted, erasing any proof he was ever a cop and any chance of being compensated for his work; immediately after he dies. The mob boss to which Colin dutifully informed his entire adult life turns out to be a federal informant himself; his girlfriend walks out on him, and he can’t enjoy the bit of class he’s clawed for himself (the only other thing he seems to value, symbolised chiefly by his bougie apartment with a view of the state capitol) because he too is swiftly murdered, by a police sergeant whose motives we can only guess at. Maybe he found out that Colin was a rat all along. Maybe he’s another rat and he’s bought Colin’s upstanding-cop act. Maybe just for the fuck of it. Who gives a shit anyway? Cop or criminal, what’s the difference? It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. The criminals snitch to the cops who snitch to the criminals who snitch to the cops and et fucking cetera. They lie and betray and hunt and kill, and no one wins, and even if they did, what would they get? What we get is one last shot of Colin's precious apartment with its view of the capitol, as a rat scurries across the balcony. You could say it followed him out of the projects, if you believe he ever went anywhere at all.
(Spoilers following for The Departed and also The Conversation.)
This may be a touch ‘guy who’s only seen Boss Baby watching his second movie’ of me, but in that whole mess of snitches and traitors and lies I couldn’t help being reminded of The Conversation—another film about how, no matter how miserable it is, you can never ever let your guard down because none of your secrets are ever truly secret. One of my favourite scenes is the one that most clearly illustrates this point: the protagonist, surveillance expert Harry Caul, has just had his lover—whom he refused to tell any personal details about himself—run out on him. In a quiet corner at a party, he details the situation to a woman and asks her what she would do if a man was that reticent with her. Harry’s crushing paranoia (understandable in itself, given his firsthand knowledge of how easy it is to spy on people) extends to a total emotional lockdown; this is the closest he ever gets to soul-baring, the first and last time he will display even a tiny corner of himself to any other living person. Immediately after, it turns out that entire conversation was recorded, and all his friends at the party have an uproarious laugh at his expense as it's played back for public entertainment.
It’s that sense of kick-in-the-teeth betrayal that I like in The Departed. The world is a pit of vipers; everyone is always deceiving everyone else, usually in the most devastating way possible. (Dr. Madolyn Madden, pretty much the only important character who is neither cop nor criminal, is still in a way playing both sides; a cheater and a liar “to keep an even keel.” As a certain television doctor would put it, everybody lies.) Both moles, Billy and Colin, are the most trusted members of the organisations they are respectively betraying: criminal informant Colin is the one chosen to hunt down the criminal informant in the state police, undercover cop Billy is the one who is given Costello’s top-secret evidence. Towards the end of the film a bunch of Costello’s most trusted criminals are revealed to be cops and a bunch of cops are revealed to be secretly criminals. Costello says it himself, unintentionally prophetic: cop or criminal, what’s the difference? Everybody lies. Everybody snitches. Everybody snitches on everybody else to everybody else.
Which brings us to the question: what the fuck was the point of all that?
At the end of The Conversation, Ann and Mark (the couple whose titular conversation was spied on) have successfully murdered her husband and gotten off scot free. They, at least, will live happily ever after. By the time credits roll on The Departed, who has gotten anything of value, let alone what they might want? Both our main characters’ stories end with them being unceremoniously shot in the face. Billy’s profile in the police database is deleted, erasing any proof he was ever a cop and any chance of being compensated for his work; immediately after he dies. The mob boss to which Colin dutifully informed his entire adult life turns out to be a federal informant himself; his girlfriend walks out on him, and he can’t enjoy the bit of class he’s clawed for himself (the only other thing he seems to value, symbolised chiefly by his bougie apartment with a view of the state capitol) because he too is swiftly murdered, by a police sergeant whose motives we can only guess at. Maybe he found out that Colin was a rat all along. Maybe he’s another rat and he’s bought Colin’s upstanding-cop act. Maybe just for the fuck of it. Who gives a shit anyway? Cop or criminal, what’s the difference? It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. The criminals snitch to the cops who snitch to the criminals who snitch to the cops and et fucking cetera. They lie and betray and hunt and kill, and no one wins, and even if they did, what would they get? What we get is one last shot of Colin's precious apartment with its view of the capitol, as a rat scurries across the balcony. You could say it followed him out of the projects, if you believe he ever went anywhere at all.
