It’s time to honor Nicholson ... again

Jack Nicholson has been such an iconic figure for so long he’s almost become a caricature at this point.

Comedians do impressions and he’s caught flirting with Lakers cheerleaders, but make no mistake, Nicholson — or just Jack, as he’s deserving of his one-name moniker — is an acting giant, first and foremost. With the right character and director, there’s no more riveting screen presence. None. Think of him rampaging through the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” or trying to verbally counterpunch Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men” as prime examples.

And now in “The Departed,” he gives us goose bumps all over again.

Playing Frank Costello, the head of the Boston mob in director Martin Scorsese’s glorious return to wise guys — and, amazingly, the first pairing of the actor and director in their long and brilliant respective careers — Nicholson is menacingly beautiful, doing whatever it takes to make sure he stays one step ahead of the cops.

All with the help of Matt Damon, a Massachusetts state trooper whose allegiance isn’t to the Commonwealth but to Costello, after he helped a younger Damon survive a tough upbringing.

Nicholson has been Oscar nominated a staggering 12 times, with three wins: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Terms of Endearment,” “As Good as It Gets.” Younger viewers who consider “The Fast and the Furious” great drama, however, can’t appreciate the brute force of a Nicholson performance.

In a career that began to take shape in the late 1960s and early ’70s in such seminal films as “Easy Rider,” “Five Easy Pieces,” “The Last Detail” and “Chinatown,” Nicholson picks and chooses his roles more carefully now. And some of those choices — “Mars Attacks!,” “Anger Management” — actually do him a great disservice for those young moviegoers who aren’t schooled in cinema.

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In “The Departed,” Nicholson is surrounded by a powerful cast of young, dynamic actors — Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg — but it’s the old man who fills the screen with the most gravitas. DiCaprio, a cop who has infiltrated Nicholson’s inner circle, is also superb and when the two share a scene, the electricity coming off could light an entire city.

Nicholson, like Costello, knows he’s getting older but isn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with those around him, 20 and 30 years his junior. Costello is set financially and could sit back in his Beantown penthouse and enjoy the material pleasures he’s earned in his life of crime, far from the reaches of a police investigation.

Yet he’s the first guy out of the car at a drug buy in harms way or on the phone trying to pry information out of Damon, when the phones could easily be tapped. That’s Nicholson, too. With Scorsese’s direction, he’s both a dangerous thug and part-time comic, offering up side-splitting one-liners. There’s a danger to try and do both but it’s what we expect of Nicholson. And he’s rarely disappointed.

One particular scene stands out: Nicholson is trying to determine if DiCaprio’s alliances are with him or, as he suspects, with the cops. They’re at a bar and he stalks around the young actor like prey, leaving audiences uneasy, wondering if Nicholson is going to kill him or hug him. Then, without warning, he sucks up his upper lip, sticks out his teeth and does an impersonation of a rat, seeing how DiCaprio will react to the accusation.

The audience laughs, knowing it’s a device that ups the tension while, at the same time, diffusing it. Less than a handful of actors could pull off. It’s Nicholson at his finest. Very Jack.

Stuart Levine is a senior editor at Daily Variety. He can be reached at .

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