Martin Scorsese’s excellent The Departed was on TV the other night. Set in Boston, the violent tale revolves around a gangster (played smarmy by local boy Matt Damon) who infiltrates the police department and a cop (aced flat and hard by Leonardo DiCaprio) who infiltrates the gangs. When it becomes clear that there’s a mole in each of the organisations, there’s a frantic, bloody race to unveil the culprits.
Boston has recently played location for a slate of top end movies – The Verdict, Good Will Hunting and Mystic River to name but a few. And as the Boston Movie Tours company notes, in this movie “There are some awesome Boston shots and the movie bleeds Boston.”
And in a case of art meeting life, the 2005 Boston Movie Tours black-and-red brochure apparently made it into a scene in the movie; you can apparently glimpse it on the counter behind Vera Farmiga as she’s moving in to Matt Damon’s apartment (in fact the top floor of Suffolk University Law at 120 Tremont Street, Boston.)
I love that.