"I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me." That's the first line of The Departed and it's spoken by Boston gangster Frank Costello. But it also could be attributed to a film director. In one scene in the middle of the film, Costello doubles as one. Or maybe Martin Scorsese doubles as a gangster. When Costello grills undercover cop Billy Costigan about being a rat, Costello is sketching a storyboard of the film's final shot. It's the rat (a bunch of them actually) and the gilded dome of the Massachusetts State House all right there in black and white. Then Costello spits whiskey on it and burns it. He sets fire to the film's final frame, controlling his environment even though he isn't even there by the time the film's final shot appears. In this vein, the film is about the whole nature vs. nurture riddle. Costello's protege Colin Sullivan has a dark side, as does Costigan. But while the latter fights against his "nature," as Dignam calls it, the former has a mentor who cultivates it. The anger directed toward being the product of one's environment and the social conflicts it breeds starts off the film with a bang. Issues like trust and betrayal, lies and integrity are the byproduct of this environment and are also questioned in the film.

Costello trusts no one but Arnold aka Mr. French, and vice versa. Neither trusts women. Girlfriends and wives need not apply. Costello tells Costigan that the only person who could do what he does is him. Couple that with his distrust of the opposite sex and you get his motive for grooming two surrogate "sons" to be upstanding citizens (and encouraging a third to go back to school) while still being able to do what he does. The climactic scene, where Sullivan realizes how he was used and abused for his entire life by a pathetic old man who had no family so he built one, is the saddest of several scenes where Matt Damon quietly induces empathy from the audience. When Sullivan considers leaving Costello's orbit to go to law school full time in another state, when he begs Costigan to kill him, then finally at the door to his condo at the end, I felt sorry for him and for what Costello had done to him. Sure he's conniving and selfish, but he didn't want to be a product of his environment either.

With regard to DiCaprio, I agree with Madolyn. His vulnerability freaked me out. But what a great freak-out. It wasn't even just about feeling vulnerable about getting caught or dying. That was the least of it. He could take the beat-downs and the cast-bustings. Like Henry Hill's dad said in Goodfellas, "everyone's gotta take a beating sometime." He was fighting the Costigans of South Boston on one hand and his mother's family on the other. He was fighting his legacy. DiCaprio's performance was rich and he brought a gravity to it and a pathos to his predicament.

Sullivan says he's a good liar which makes him perfect for his job. But there are no shortage of liars in the film. Madolyn the psychiatrist wears a Harvard t-shirt but went to UMass. She also tells Sullivan that she's pregnant when she likely realizes the baby is Costigan's. She was going to tell Costigan first, which probably means she thinks he's the father. But Costigan tells her to wait two weeks, so she shows Sullivan her sonogram in the interim. One of them was getting a lie. But like she says, sometimes it's easier to lie to put things on an even keel. Madolyn symbolizes yet another corrupt institution: the medical one. For all intents and purposes, she was sleeping with an enforcer in Costello's crew at the same time she was living with a policeman. She was lucky that SHE wasn't the subject of an inquiry for being an informant. But how can any cop or criminal NOT fall for her? Those eyes are practically a visual effect themselves.

Alec Baldwin's comedic quips were killers. His reaction to the video tech guy royally fucking up was priceless. Someone needs to put him and Mark Wahlberg in a hard R-rated comedy. They'd make a great team. Ray Winstone's strong screen presence was used effectively and David O'Hara and Mark Rolston one-up Infernal Affairs "picking out the cops" bit with a line that sounds like it might have come out of an SNL skit with Tom Hanks and Jon Lovitz when they say "all the good-looking women are cops." I could see Annette Benning in her younger days playing Frank's moll Gwen. Kristen Dalton's attitude and sarcasm reminded me of her.

That leaves the big man: Jack. He may flirt with the edges, but I don't think he goes completely over the top (well, not consistently OTT). With all the talk of dildos & strap-ons, dildos & strap-ons, dildos & strap-ons, it turned out to be a throwaway visual joke. It probably got the biggest laugh in the theater. As entertaining as he was, I like the work of the people reacting to him. This is Damon and DiCaprio's film and their performances keep Costello anchored. But it sure is fun to watch him work: the rat mimicry bit, sneaking up on Costigan, the "reality TV" line that's going to date the film like no other in Scorsese's filmography (that one and Baldwin's PATRIOT ACT, PATRIOT ACT!" schtick).

As much as the film reflects the basic plotlines of Infernal Affairs, it's tone at times reminds me more of John Woo's Face/Off with a dash of Tarantino thrown in. Scorsese scored Costigan's beating of the two Providence mobsters to the tune of "Nobody But Me" and that's how Tarantino scored the House of Blue Leaves massacre in Kill Bill vol. 1. Scorsese also stopped his soundtrack dead in its tracks when Costigan's aunt opens the door after Dropkick Murphys blares over the opening title. It reminded me of Truck Turner stopping cold after Uma rolls her wheelchair up to the Pussy Wagon in the hospital parking lot.

So is the film a stylistic exercise, an entertaining piece of genre filmmaking? Is it Trading Places meets Goodfellas? Or is it a "Scorsese" movie just dressed up in thriller clothes and actually says something deeper? I'll take two from column A and one from column B. And give me an extra fortune cookie. It brings up the most Scorsesean of all Scorsesean themes: how does one act decent in an indecent world? In Costello's world, even the church is no sanctuary.