Sociology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 4

Sociology - Essay Example parted focuses on the criminal element’s ability to infiltrate law enforcement at the highest and most sensitive levels of operation in order to facilitate criminal and organized crime activities. What results, as demonstrated by the film, is the obscuring of identities, priorities, and loyalties that lead to dangerous and deadly situations for undercover operatives. Actor Leonardo DeCaprio, playing the undercover good cop, has as his counterpart actor Matt Damon, playing the undercover bad guy in the police department. DeCaprio, whose acting abilities and skills bring a superb talent and realism to the role that allows the viewer to suspend disbelief and to become engrossed in the film’s back and forth good cop versus bad cop role playing; is, in character, reduced to the role of the neighborhood thug and thief. In the film, as in reality, men of Irish descent had two options; crime and the streets, or education and law enforcement. DeCaprio’s character opts for education and law enforcement, to move away from not just the stereo-typical image of the Irish thug and hood, but the reality of it as it existed in his family. DeCaprio’s character’s family is well known in the neighborhood and within the hierarchy of law enforcement as breeding criminals. Damon’s family, on the other hand, has a less prominent family history, but nonetheless is inducted into the Irish organized crime scene early on as a child. Damon is quickly recognized as being intelligent, capable of passing the mental and physical tests for acceptance that would give him access to the highest levels of confidence and information as a law enforcement official – with the help of Nicholson’s character’s sponsorship from the outside. Damon, another skilled and talented actor, convincingly portrays the bad guy playing the good cop, and feeds Nicholson’s character inside information with which to pull off successful crime capers by the Irish thugs and thieves. Nicholson is,