Review #978: 'Black Mass' (2015)

Over his impressively long career, Johnny Depp has adorned make-up and a variety of wigs, contact lenses and outlandish costumes to deliver a plethora of memorable (and not-so-memorable) characters, performed with a trademark flamboyance now simpatico with the actor. The success of these films, which are often seen through the gothic lens of Tim Burton, makes it easy to forget that there is a good-looking actor capable of a fantastic 'normal' performance in there somewhere. Black Mass shows a bit of both sides. He has once again donned a rather distracting appearance - a set of pale blue eyes, a receding hairline and bulbous nose - to portray James "Whitey" Bulger, but there is also a terrific and unseen intensity to Depp here, convincingly scaring the shit out of anyone he comes across.

Clearly channelling Scorsese visually, director Scott Cooper of Crazy Heart (2009) and Out of the Furnace (2013) fame skips his main character's rise to criminal overlord in favour of showing us just how much of a bastard Bulger was (and probably still is). His otherworldly appearance, with blotchy skin and a mouth full of wonky brown teeth, is not how the real man looked but instead serves to highlight his monstrous nature. Bulger's activities are recollected by his former gang members Stephen Flemmi (Rory Cochrane), Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons) and John Martorano (W. Earl Brown), who all have their own bone to pick with him by the end of their story. His willingness to murder and threaten whether it be for business, pleasure, or to simply stay out of jail led to Bulger becoming one of the most notorious criminals in Boston history.

In the beginning, Bulger is approached by FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), a local boy, who offers him a free ticket to the top of the criminal underworld. It's not snitching, but a deal that benefits both sides as Connolly is served rival gang members on a plate, and Bulger gets to carry on with his illegal activities without the prying eyes of federal agents. Only Connolly seems to be enjoying peeking into the criminal high life a bit too much while Bulger gives him diddly squat. Bulger plays him like a fiddle, managing to silence a dinner table with murderous threats thinly disguised as jest in one stand-out scene. And Black Mass is at its best when the film moves into darker territory, cruelly teasing the inevitable brutality to come whenever a disposable minor character shuffles onto the scene.

Narratively, it's all over the place and tends to neglect detail in favour of more conventional biopic storytelling. In the few scenes he has, Benedict Cumberbatch oozes a subtle sliminess as Whitey's Massachusetts State Senate President brother Billy. The vastly different paths these two brothers took could have made for engaging drama and given the film more balance, but strangely Cooper chooses to almost ignore the relationship completely to concentrate on Bulger's dealing with the FBI, so Cumberbatch is criminally under-served. However, as silly as he looks, Depp is genuinely unsettling and, like the film as a whole, gets under your skin. Black Mass sounds like it should be a horror, and as the creepy real-life security footage plays out over the credits, its hard to deny that in many way it is.


Directed by: Scott Cooper
Starring: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnson, Rory Cochrane, Jesse Plemons, Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard, Julianne Nicholson
Country: USA/UK

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie