CRIME TIME SCORSESE INHABITS THE STREETS OF SOUTH BOSTON IN `THE DEPARTED'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

After spending most of the decade re-creating the Civil War era and delving into the lives of Howard Hughes and Bob Dylan, New York's Little Italy's maestro of contemporary crime cinema, Martin Scorsese, is back on the mean streets.

Only this time, it's the mean streets of South Boston, Irish-American South Boston.

``The Departed'' takes place in that infamously crime-ridden neighborhood as well as in the headquarters of the Massachusetts State Police. It contrasts the dramas/traumas of two deep-cover moles, one infiltrating a gang for the cops and another working for that gang's boss while rising through the ranks of the state's Special Investigation Unit.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays the freaked-out undercover cop Billy Costigan, and Matt Damon is the devious crook-with-a-badge Colin Sullivan. In his first work for Scorsese, Jack Nicholson plays the ruthless crime kingpin Frank Costello, who is gradually losing his mind.

Themes of paranoia, loyalty, betrayal, Catholicism, urban psychosis and, of course, extreme violence rip through ``The Departed,'' which is adapted from the Hong Kong thriller ``Infernal Affairs.'' It's all stuff that we associate with Scorsese's New York masterpieces -- ``Mean Streets,'' ``Taxi Driver,'' ``Raging Bull'' and ``GoodFellas.'' And most of the film's interiors were filmed in Scorsese's NYC comfort zone.

But Boston?

Scorsese says he could easily identify with the Celtic milieu of William Monahan's screenplay.

``Yes, there was some differences when they first moved into the same neighborhood,'' the 63-year-old Italian-American says of the Irish, whose history he explored in the 2002 epic ``Gangs of New York.'' ``But Irish literature is very important to me, and the poetry of the Irish is something that's extraordinary. And the Irish sense of Catholicism is a very interesting contrast to the Italian sense of Catholicism, and that's very interesting to me.''

Found in translation

But regardless of the ethnic specifics, it was how Monahan translated the Chinese film into a prototypically American crime drama that really drew Scorsese to the piece.

``I'm aware of Hong Kong cinema,'' the voracious film buff acknowledges. ``I had to find my own way in this, and I think what Bill's script had was really the way, and that is the nature, that microcosm that he described, the people and the way he describes them -- the way he has them behave, the language he used.''

And what language. Nicholson is at his most profanely provocative as the anything-for-shock-effect criminal mastermind; Mark Wahlberg is the invective-spewing, bad-cop half of the team (with Martin Sheen) running DiCaprio's jittery undercover man; Alec Baldwin leads the police task force with an undisguisable zeal for nailing Costello, preferably more dead than alive.

To the Boston natives in the cast, the Big Apple interloper not only got the sound but the smell and spirit of Beantown down cold.

It's such a different culture,'' Cambridge-born Damon says. ``Boston is different from any city in America, so it's very specific. The story structure was from the Hong Kong version, but the world that was built around it was very specific to Boston.''

``Marty captures the flavor of the place fantastically,'' says Wahlberg, who grew up in Boston's working-class Dorchester district, a neighborhood very similar to hard-knock Southy. ``In a lot of ways, this was right in Marty's wheelhouse.

``And I finally got to talk like my mother and my father,'' Wahlberg continues -- then quickly adds that his character's rougher language was more inspired by the cops who arrested him during his well-documented delinquent youth.

Leo and Marty

To DiCaprio, who was on his third Scorsese feature in a row after ``Gangs'' and ``The Aviator,'' it didn't matter when or where the film was set.

``I don't have an exciting term for it other than we have a good time working together, and we have similar tastes as far as the films we like,'' L.A.-raised DiCaprio explains. ``He certainly has broadened my spectrum as far as the importance of cinema. And it really brought me to different levels as an actor. I look at him as a mentor.''

And violence is part of most Scorsese films. So how does DiCaprio deal with that?

``I guess by watching Martin Scorsese movies, right?'' the eternally boyish actor cracks.

``It's not really familiar to me, that form of immediate violence, but that's what you do as an actor. If you can't draw upon anything in your real life, you go meet people that have done these sorts of things, and part of the process for me was going to Boston. I had never spent any time there. I learned about the Boston subculture, met some of the real people who were around during the late '80s.''

Damon's research, on the other hand, involved a ride-along with some Massachusetts cops on a real drug bust.

`Can I get a gun?' ... `Shut up'

``Yeah, it was like, have you ever seen the movie `The Hard Way' with Michael J. Fox?'' Damon says, chuckling. ``That was me. I was like, `Hey guys, can I get a gun?' They're like, `Absolutely not. Shut up.' ''

Damon adds, though, that some of what he learned from that raid found its way into ``The Departed'' -- and that it's that kind of verisimilitude that sets the violence of Scorsese movies apart from the bloody norm.

``I'm serious,'' Damon says. ``As violent as this film is, none of that violence is gratuitous, and the characters all pay a price for the violence that they inflict on each other.''

Although ``Gangs'' certainly boasted a high casualty count, when Scorsese's main focus is on period re-creation or some other topic, the films are usually criticized for not living up to his high artistic standards.

``The violence in my films, I just -- I tend to -- I can't defend it,'' Scorsese ponders.

``I don't know if I approach it differently; I approach it the way I think I experienced it. Others just block it out of their minds. Me, I was very affected by it.

`Absurdity in violence'

``I can tell you, more than the physical violence, the emotional violence around me -- it's part of what I am, who I am. And somehow it channels itself into the films, but ... I see it, sometimes, almost as absurd. In this film, too, there's absurdity in some of the violence. But that's just the absurdity of being alive, you know.''

It's that understanding of the human condition -- in all of its ugliness and occasionally, maybe, transcendence -- that keeps the best in the business eager to work with Martin Scorsese.

``There just aren't a lot of opportunities to make serious films like this today at the studio level,'' says Baldwin, who makes his second limited but flavorful appearance for Scorsese in ``The Departed.'' ``Sometimes it might not be worth it to interrupt your schedule and go do that. But even the chance to make a modest contribution to a film of Marty's is worthwhile. I would drop everything to work for Marty.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) The mean streets of `THE DEPARTED'

Martin Scorsese examines Irish-American culture

(2) Martin Scorsese, center, shares a moment with the cast and crew of ``The Departed,'' including Leonardo DiCaprio, left, and Jack Nicholson, right.