“The Departed,” is not only the best movie of the year thus far, but outside of “Return of the King”, “Requiem for a Dream”, “City of God”, and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, it’s possibly the best film of the decade.

Director Martin Scorsese’s remake of the Chinese film “Internal Affairs” is sinfully captivating, complete with all the beautiful traditional Scorsese vulgarity and violence.

The intricate plot and complex characters establish the film as one that will probably need multiple views. It’s difficult not to relish in the purely Bostonian dialogue exchanges between all of these A-list actors. But be careful not to lose focus of the story.

The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as “Billy Costigan,” a cop that goes undercover to infiltrate the Boston mob led by boss “Frank Costello” (Jack Nicholson). What he doesn’t know is that Costello has already put a mole inside the police department, “Officer Colin Sullivan” (Matt Damon), the man Costello has personally trained since childhood. Sullivan’s job is to leak information in regards to cases the department is establishing against him.

Both Sullivan and Costigan learn about the moles, but they don’t know who or how many. Eventually they realize that for them to do their jobs, each is going to have to discover his counterpart. The two complicated roles are fleshed out well by both DiCaprio and Damon. DiCaprio is raw and intense whereas Damon is much more subtle and intuitive.

Filling out the rotation is Alec Baldwin as Sullivan’s superior officer “Captain Ellerby.” Ray Winstone is Costello’s vicious henchman “Mr. French,” Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg are “Detectives Queenan” and “Dignam.” The two take the good cop/bad cop routine to an irresistibly comedic level. Vera Farmiga wonderfully plays the somewhat thankless role indirectly connecting Sullivan and Costigan — she is Costigan’s therapist and Sullivan’s girlfriend.

And then there’s Nicholson. He turns Frank Costello into a classic cinematic mobster. Based off of famous Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger, Costello might be the world’s most evil man. The character gives a female cashier a handful of change and tells her to go buy some makeup. Later he douses a couple of strippers in a flurry of cocaine and tells them not to move until they’re numb. Nicholson is vicious and unforgiving… and Oscar-worthy.

And that brings up Martin Scorsese. “Taxi Driver” was robbed for Best Picture in 1976 by “Rocky.” “Raging Bull” lost to “Ordinary People” in 1980. And “Dances with Wolves” inexplicably beat out “Goodfellas” in 1990. The Academy isn’t going to screw this up again. Expect them to be chanting “Marty! Marty! Marty!” come March.