Daily Dialogue — October 7, 2013
BILLY moves COLIN into the elevator and as the doors close looks back at BROWN, still in a Mexican stand-off.
COLIN, nose broken, blood masking his face.
COLIN: I can’t wait for you to try to explain this to a Suffolk County grand jury. This is gonna be fun.
The indicator ticks. Down, down, down. Colin sobs.
COLIN: Just fucking kill me.
BILLY: I am killing you.
The doors open and for a frozen moment BILLY, holding the gun on COLIN, stares out of the car. A LOUD BANG. BILLY is shot through the head. BLOOD sprays the walls, and COLIN is hit by flying blood and matter. BILLY falls, crumpled, on his face, half in and half out of the elevator. The doors try to close…open…COLIN, covered with blood, looks up. BARRIGAN lowers his pistol. COLIN slumps, covered with blood. BARRIGAN uncuffs him. COLIN feels his wrists. BARRIGAN picks up BILLY’S gun. The other elevator doors open and BROWN emerges. He looks into the bloody elevator and down at the dead man.
BROWN: (holstering his gun) Shit…
BARRIGAN raises BILLY’S GUN and shoots BROWN in the head.
COLIN stares at him.
BARRIGAN: Did you think you were the only one he had? Costello was going to sell us to the FBI. It’s you and me now. We have to take care of each other. You understand?
COLIN: All right. Give me that.
BARRIGAN casually hands COLIN BILLY’S GUN.
COLIN presses the gun against BARRIGAN’s forehead and fires.
— The Departed (2006), William Monahan (screenplay), Alan Mak and Felix Chong (2002 screenplay Mou gaan dou)
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is assassination suggested by Aarthi Ramanathan. Today’s suggestion by Chris Chun.
Trivia: Throughout the film, Martin Scorsese used Xs mostly shown in the background to mark characters for death; examples include shots of Costigan walking through the airport while talking to Sgt. Dignam, Queenan falling to his death (on the building’s glass windows as Queenan falls to the ground), and Sullivan in his office discussing the flow of information with Costello (the X is created by the light shining through the window). This is a homage to Howard Hawks’ classic film Scarface.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary from Chris: “William Monohan does an incredible job showing us Colin Sullivan’s anguish and mental transformation, as Billy Costigan takes him down the elevator. The elevator ticking “down, down, down” coincides with Colin’s initial burst of anger and defiance slowly transforming to a desperate realization that what Billy is doing to him is actually worse than death.
This brief, almost quiet, exchange precedes quite possibly one of the most brutal, violent, holy-shit-where-did-that-fucking-come-from sequences ever seen in film.”
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