A Campaign To ‘Fix’ The Ending Of Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Departed’ Has People All Fired Up

Warner Bros.

At the end of Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film The Departed, Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) confronts crooked cop Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) in his luxurious Boston apartment. The former kills the latter and leaves the scene, but not before the camera zooms in on a painfully on-the-nose metaphor walking across the deceased’s balcony. Yes, it’s a rat, just like Sullivan was, and it seems one fan has finally had enough. So he launched a Kickstarter to digitally remove the offending rodent (and its symbolism).

Adam Sacks’ campaign, “Digitally Erase the Rat From the End of The Departed,” declares that Scorsese’s rat was a “bad idea,” but with $4,000, adds that he can “fix it” for good:

The script is phenomenal, and the actors give it their all, clearly excited to be in a Scorsese gangster movie.

Unfortunately The Departed has one huge problem. The movie ends with the painfully on the nose metaphor of an ACTUAL RAT crawling across screen.

It’s always bothered me that a movie as good as The Departed has such a cheesy ending, and I recently realized it could be fixed by digitally erasing the rat from the last shot.

As of this writing, Sacks has garnered $2,932 in donations and still has 28 days to go before Kickstarter’s deadline.

Unsurprisingly, however, the campaign has generated plenty of reactions on social media — especially from film critics and entertainment journalists who think the rat is just fine.

— David Sims (@davidlsims) February 19, 2019

THE DEPARTED is great and the rat is fine. That is this evening’s bulletin.

— Guy Lodge (@GuyLodge) February 20, 2019

Of course, it wouldn’t be Twitter without some snark.

— Max Read (@max_read) February 20, 2019

Brooklyn man: The rat at the end of The Departed is bad

J.K. Rowling: The rat at the end of The Departed is Peter Pettigrew

— Carrie Wittmer (@carriesnotscary) February 20, 2019

this isn’t sarcastic. i truly truly love that rat at the end of the departed. in the theater i had to resist cheering. hit me as a really audacious way to end a movie that no other filmmaker would dare do. scorsese knows better than all of us thank god!

— Paul Rust (@paulrust) February 19, 2019

With all the CGI de-aging that Scorsese’s The Irishman will be doing for Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, perhaps the digitally erased rat will find a new home on Netflix.