The Abridged Script
FADE IN:
EXT. BOSTON
JACK NICHOLSON kills a whole bunch of people to establish that he's the bad guy. He finds YOUNG MATT DAMON.
JACK NICHOLSON
If you want to make it in life, you have to be like me, boy.
YOUNG MATT DAMON
I have to develop a comical-looking smile and do successively worse impressions of myself in every movie?
JACK NICHOLSON
No, you need to embrace organized crime. Kill people for money and drugs and stuff.
YOUNG MATT DAMON
Organized crime, eh? This is a real departure for Martin Scorsese.
JACK NICHOLSON
This one has cops, though. Go become one and leak inside information to me.
MATT does this. He graduates with LEONARDO DICAPRIO. They meet with MARK WAHLBERG.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
I'm really looking forward to becoming a cop.
MARK WAHLBERG
Leonardo DiCaprio? Again? What the hell does Scorsese see in you that nobody else does?
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
I dunno, I keep reminding him I was in Titanic. He doesn't seem to mind.
MARK WAHLBERG
Oh well, I'm going to treat you like shit for the next 10 minutes. When I'm done, hopefully you'll agree to put your life in jeopardy by going undercover for me.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
That makes sense. I'll do it.
MARK WAHLBERG
You made the right choice you pathetic pile of horse semen.
LEONARDO exits, MATT DAMON enters.
MARK WAHLBERG
As for you, Matt, I see no reason why we shouldn't promote you as quickly as possible in order to make the audience angry with us for promoting the rat so trustingly.
MATT DAMON
Thank ya, sah. Ah'll be shar ta, eh, leak so much infamation as ta clearly indacate Ah'm, eh, a raht.
MARK WAHLBERG
Jesus Christ. Is that your Boston accent? I grew up in Massachusetts, man.
MATT DAMON
Yeah, ah, so did ah.
MARK WAHLBERG
Lord. Did you ever leave the house or did you just watch stereotypes on Saturday Night Live? This is supposed to be a serious movie.
MATT DAMON
Yeah well, wait till you hear Baldwin.
ALEC BALDWIN
Ah, Ich bin ein berliner.
Lots of people get KILLED, because that's what happens in ORGANIZED CRIME. LEONARDO infiltrates the world of organized crime while MATT infiltrates the world of the police.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
As a cop working undercover in organized crime, I have to regularly deal with the fact that I'm killing innocent people. This makes me tortured and conflicted. This is a theme that has NEVER, EVER been explored in film before.
JACK NICHOLSON
I'm starting to get suspicious that someone inside my group is a mole.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
You're just now realizing it? Didn't Matt know that way, way earlier in the movie?
JACK NICHOLSON
Yes, but I'm only just now starting to suspect the person who is both my most recent recruit and an ex cop.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
You're quite the moron. Well, the cops are trying to find their mole too. You should follow their lead: promote the mole until he is totally above suspicion. It's how any important investigation should work.
Both groups try to weed out their rat. Meanwhile, MATT DAMON asks psychologist VERA FARMIGA to move in with him.
MATT DAMON
Surely no harm can come from a behavior expert moving in with someone barely holding together a double life.
VERA FARMIGA
I answered a phone call from Jack Nicholson within literally the first 10 seconds of moving in.
MATT and LEONARDO race against each other to figure out who the opposing informant is. Suddenly, it turns out that pretty much everyone is actually an informant.
EVERYONE
You're all informants?
Everyone is killed by everyone else.
MARK WAHLBERG
Wow, what a poignant and tragic film about organized crime and government corruption.
MARTIN SCORSESE
That's right, and I'd better win a damned Oscar for it this time.
The film closes with a shot of a RAT walking in front of the MASSACHUSETTS STATE HOUSE, just in case you were a COMPLETE FUCKING IMBECILE.
END