Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) talks business with his new employee, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), in director Martin Scorsese's "The Departed."

courtesy of warner bros. pictures

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Martin Scorsese's sense of the underworld certainly hasn't departed.

Bashing through the theater doors with guns blazing and sewermouth yapping, supernova-studded "The Departed" takes your imagination hostage for an incredibly brisk 150 minutes.

This is a mob movie the way it should be done, with tragic overtones, memorable dialogue and penetrating acting from a pitch-perfect cast. If not for the cell phones, you'd think the film was made in the 1970s.

"The Departed" is Scorsese grabbing New Hollywood by its ear to teach it a lesson the old-fashioned way.

Set in South Boston and filmed in Boston and New York, the thriller slinks across a complex web of crossed alliances between the Massachusetts State Police and the Irish mob. The two main figures are cops working deep undercover.

Matt Damon is Colin Sullivan, a bright-eyed up-and-comer no one realizes is a mole for kingpin Frank Costello, played by a seething Jack Nicholson. A parallel story follows Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), who trained in the academy at the same time as Sullivan (but the two never met), and is assigned to infiltrate Costello's ranks.

Sullivan and Costigan do their jobs so well that their bosses realize their enterprises must be infested with rats. Thus begins a chess game between the two ruthless sides. Bones crack, bullets fly and the two leads maneuver like terrified quarterbacks scrambling to make something of a broken play.

Further complicating matters, Sullivan and Costigan become interested in the same woman, a state psychiatrist played by Vera Farmiga.

Based on the 2002 Hong Kong thriller "Infernal Affairs," William Monahan's script snarls like a chained, underfed pit bull with a spiked collar. The dialogue is as funny as it is harsh, and the script is only a half-step behind Nicholas Pileggi's "GoodFellas" effort.

Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg storm in for impressive bits as hardcase cops that would leave you clamoring for more if you weren't enraptured by the DiCaprio and Damon story lines.

Under a lesser director, a cast this big could run away with the film, turning it into a scene-stealing derby like "Con Air." Scor-sese has such command that the huge stars relegate themselves into characters who form a stunning tableau of underworld ferociousness.

The action and dialogue delivered by this strong cast would be enough to make the movie a must-see, but Scorsese is never content to simply skim along the surface. His film probes the tortured psyches of the two principals, who lose sight of who they are. The filmmaker also vents his frustration with the Catholic Church, taking some pointed swipes at the hypocrisy that allowed the priest molestation scandal to mushroom unchecked.

Themes of duality, loyalty and trust — both of oneself and the fabric of society — sling alongside every word and bullet.