"You had 1400 on your sat kid your an astronaut not a statie", "5 years from now you could be anything else in the world but you will not be a Massachusetts state trooper"- are they really implying that troopers are of low intelligence and that you can be too smart to be a cop? I know it's just a movie but still?
shareI got this from a transcript site:
You're no fucking cop.
He's right.
We deal in deception here.
What we do not deal with
is self-deception.
Five years from now you could be
anything else in the world.
But you will not be
a Massachusetts state trooper.
- Are you sure of that?
- I'm sure of that.
Guaran-fucking-teed.
You had 1400 on your SATs, kid.
You're an astronaut, not a statie.
You don't have much family.
I don't have any family.
It doesn't have the names, but we can follow the flow here.
The context is suggesting some things:
1) The line about self-deception means that they think Billy is doing more of his "Southie Act" - he's going to pretend to be a regular guy, but in reality he's too smart and he'll get bored. It's not just intelligence, it's that he's not going to be satisfied being a trooper.
2) They're trying to recruit him. They don't want him to think that he's got a good career in the standard units because they want him to say yes when they ask Billy to become their mole into Costello's empire.
3) "You're no fucking cop". They're checking his character. They're checking his responses and his attitude. What happens when they push him this way and that way? The whack at him from "you think you're so smart" might be to see how he responds. It's a job interview. So they're probably testing him.
To be a statie, yeah. He kind of was saying that. he wouldn't fit in, find the work interesting enough.
shareIt's the classic "overqualified for the job" idea. People with high intelligence tend to do poorly in jobs that don't use their intelligence and tax them with tedious tasks. I'd imagine being a "Statie" is mostly like all cop jobs -- filled with dull, repetitive paperwork and other routine tasks with no flexibility for intelligent and creative minds.
Their argument wasn't that he'd get fired, but mostly that he would surely quit because the job would drive him nuts and his intelligence would give him better opportunities elsewhere.
What's surprising is that he wasn't be lured in with a more lucrative Statie job/rank more suited to his intelligence after his undercover assignment. Surely Costigan isn't so much the genius that he was smarter than Martin Sheen's character or other senior investigators. It was like they expected him to go undercover, collect a big paycheck and then quit, when in fact he would probably be an amazing detective after this stint with all kinds of hard-to-get first hand knowledge of criminal enterprises and behavior.
The only thing that explains this forced retirement after undercover is either they fear for his life -- some kind of mob vendetta that taking down Costello wouldn't end, or they think for psychological reasons he would be a bad bet as a cop, vulnerable to engaging in criminal behavior (who best knows how to beat the system *and* be a criminal?) or just unstable.