The Departed: Mark Wahlberg is the stuff dreams are made of.

The Departed was crazy cool, as I think you all know. Never before, at least that I can remember, have I seen a film that left me trembling in the seats. Ya, know, one of those flicks where you occaisionally say to yourself "Oh, right, it's just a movie, I can relax..."

The film kept coming back to the reflection of a human's life--on several axies. That is, the converse and inverse of the soul. A good guy in a den of bad guys circles around a bad guy that's infilrated the good guys. They spiral ever close to one another, and the whole time, Jack Nicholson's words ring in your ears (and I paraphrase): "it doesn't much matter whether your a crook or a cop, cuz they're both the same when you have a gun pointed to your head."

Each facader came across he tracks of the other, but it wasn't until the ramped up last third of the film that the two counter-protagonists directly interact, and now our opinion of these foils is so informed, like if Alien fought Predator. Oh, they did? Well, then... if the Ghostbusters fought the Ninja Turtles. And the Beatles fought the cast of Seinfeld. Either way, we win.

The reason, though, the film was so tense, and demanded my constant scrutiny, was because of the ever-present dread it laid out. Everyone felt so... brittle... so precariously tip-toeing through life... Who knows when our best friends are suddenly our enemies, or we can't count on our only hopes... or Brad Pitt turns out ot be part of Edward Norton's imagination?! And who is this Keiser Soze?