Black Mass

Johnny Depp temporarily throws off the fantastical shackles of Wonderland and the Pirates franchise to once again portray someone who more or less resembles a real human being (based on an historical figure, no less) in Scott Cooper’s Black Mass. But as ‘notorious’ Boston gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, Depp has little more to do than glower icily behind his blue contact lenses while re-enacting hoary clichés from every generic mob movie of the past 30 years. The film is so leaden and superficial, it should have been called Blank Mask; this version of Whitey Bulger is as glacial and impenetrable as a White Walker, if not quite as charming.

Black Mass traces Bulger’s rise from 1975, when he was a small-town crime boss controlling the mean streets of south Boston. An old pal from the ‘Southie’ projects, FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), approaches him about making a pact: Connolly will look the other way regarding Bulger’s criminal activities if he agrees to act as an informant on north Boston’s Italian mafia. Bulger is soon propelled to major player status, with rackets in everything from drugs to Florida sports gambling. In the meantime, Connolly gets seduced by the supposed glamour of it all, becoming implicated in Bulger’s dirty dealings while enjoying emerging star status at the Bureau.

Despite the gloss of decades, there is none of the emotional scope so necessary for a story like this to resonate. (Why, for instance, does Connolly not seem even remotely conflicted about his deal with this sociopath?) Instead we get endless exposition, umpteen stock scenes of hits and transparently obvious betrayals, Benedict Cumberbatch trying on a painful Boston accent as Bulger’s state senator brother, and a perpetual loop of depictions of Bulger’s loose cannon personality. Black Mass seems to think it’s saying something interesting about power and institutional corruption. All it really accomplishes is the heady task of making one of the most wanted criminals in U.S. history a boring Hollywood trope. [Michelle Devereaux]