10 Movie Heroes Who Might As Well Have Stayed At Home
6. Sean Dignam Had It Covered - The Departed
Martin Scorsese's The Departed was full of twists and turns, as the Boston Police Department attempted to catch a mob boss (Jack Nicholson) and the informant working for him (Matt Damon). In order to get close to bringing them down, the BPD put a rat of their own (Leonardo DiCaprio) into the mob's criminal organisation.
Why Costigan shouldn't have bothered: Although DiCaprio's character Billy Costigan was instrumental in bringing down the mob boss, it appeared that staff sergeant Sean Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) already had a strong hunch as to who the rat was. At the end of the film, the BPD rat seemed to have gotten away with his involvement but, after a brawl in the police station resulting in Dignam's suspension, Dignam showed up at his house armed with a silenced pistol and shot him dead.
The consequences: Billy's involvement in the case and his personal obsession with finding the rat resulted in him growing more and more paranoid and anxious until he got himself and his best friend from police academy killed. Had he called it a day after taking down the mob, he'd still be alive and living the rest of his days with severe PTSD.