Matt Damon’s 151-Minute Crime Thriller With the Best Pink Floyd Song Explodes on HBO Max

Matt Damon has worked in several massive projects with big filmmakers, but none have been as interesting and stacked as Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. The crime thriller had Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and more stars in a single frame helmed by a filmmaker at the top of his game.

The film, which won Scorsese his first and only Oscar for Best Director, also featured an array of classic rock songs, with Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb being used in a debatable fashion. Read on to learn why the film is on the charts of HBO Max now and how the film has aged since its release twenty years ago.

Why is Matt Damon’s Tense Thriller Trending on HBO Max Now?

Matt Damon in The Departed | Credits: Warner Bros.

A remake of the Hong Kong crime drama Infernal Affairs, Martin Scorsese pulled off the biggest casting coups of a generation with The Departed. Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio, both A-listers and Oscar nominees (Damon had won for Best Original Screenplay already), played moles on either side of the gang war in Boston.

While the film was released in 2006, it is back on the HBO Max charts. FlixPatrol reported that The Departed is ranking at sixth place on the US charts for October 7, 2026. It ranks behind Supergirl, Evil Dead Burn, and this year’s runaway hit, Backrooms. It ranks above A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining, and Scooby-Doo.

But what is the reason for the twenty-year-old Matt Damon-starrer to rank high up on the charts now? The Departed has moved around from streamer to streamer quite a bit. First it was on Netflix, and it only dropped on HBO Max in October. New entries, especially a classic like Scorsese’s tense thriller, usually end up on charts and revive interest.

Since it is Halloween month, many of the new entries on HBO Max have been horror films. The Departed, though not horror, definitely has a lot of tense moments that make it a thrilling ride. Audiences who do not want a traditional ghost story would rather get their creeps with the film, which keeps you guessing till the last moment.

Martin Scorsese Filled The Departed With Several Rock Classics

Leonardo DiCaprio and Vera Farmiga in The Departed | Credits: Warner Bros.

Martin Scorsese is known for including some pretty classic and hard rock songs on his soundtracks. He has used so many songs from the Rolling Stones that it has become a meme at this point. Everyone loves the music breaks in Goodfellas, where he uses Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love, or House of the Rising Sun in Casino.

Scorsese really went for the Hall of Fame with The Departed as he used one of Pink Floyd’s most iconic songs, Comfortably Numb. The song comes in an intimate scene between Leonardo DiCaprio and Vera Farmiga. While there have been debates about whether the song fits in the scene or if it is distracting, props definitely go to the filmmaker for using such a classic.

The version used is also not the original. It comes from Roger Waters’ 1990 staging of The Wall in Berlin, where Waters sang lead, and Van Morrison sang Gilmour’s vocal parts, backed by Rick Danko and Levon Helm of The Band. Another song that has become a part of the film intrinsically is Dropkick Murphy’s I’m Shipping Up to Boston.

Twenty years on, The Departed still stands as a tense, well-acted thriller with one of the best soundtracks in modern crime cinema. If the HBO Max chart is any sign, a new group of viewers is about to find out why.

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