zero subjective stars
Hyped as Johnny Depp's return to relevance, a commentary on his pirate franchise and his mostly quirky recent roles, Black Mass gives Depp the opportunity to play an extremely evil real-life villain. As Jimmy 'Whitey' Bulger, a South Boston gangster with a relish for strangling, shooting and beating victims to death, Depp gets to do serious drama. Bulger had a childhood friend who became a local FBI agent and helped facilitate his rise from thug to kingpin. He also had a brother who rose to become a respected politician. A nice setup for a true crime gangster flick.The cast is strong from Kevin Bacon as a lead FBI agent to Benedict Cumberbatch as a social climbing Boston politician. Still, this film is anchored by Depp's ambitious, bloodthirsty thug and it lives and dies on those terms.
In the first ten minutes or so my brother-in-law and I turned to each other and said "What's up with his eyes? He looks like a vampire alien." And I spent the rest of the film trying to determine exactly why with Depp's light blue contact lenses looked so sketchy. Makeup overkill.That was a pain, but I could have overlooked it had the story unravelled more creatively. In this telling, Bulger's no more than a psychopathic robot. We're not privy to how or when he became homicidal and the few moments where he expresses genuine humanity don't make him any more cuddly. And that's the ultimate flaw, a main character without evolution. Nor do the writers throw in much fashion sense or music from the 70's and 80's, no disco boots or bad synth pop. The mood is somber. It's a gangster movie with brutal killings, intimidation and corruption; there's really nothing to do but watch Bulger kill enemies, and more often, friends for 120 minutes. Is Depp convincing as a killer? Yes, he's very unpleasant, but he's not really required to stretch much in this one.
Good performances, good direction, nice cinematography and very lackluster writing.
