For his portrayal of notorious Boston crime lord Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger in Black Mass, Johnny Depp has been transformed into a pasty, puckered mook with thinning gray hair and piercing cerulean eyes. Surrounded by beefy character actors playing other Boston underworld heavies, Depp’s makeup is initially distracting rather than immersive. However, as director Scott Cooper’s cops-and-robbers saga unfolds, Depp emerges as the most engaging aspect of a polished but overly schematic film. Those inhuman eyes become the signifier of Bulger’s satanic malevolence and cunning, marking him as a different breed than the G-men and gangsters that he outwitted.
Bulger is a ruthless but small-time hood when FBI agent and fellow Irish-American Southie Jon Connolly (Joel Edgerton) proposes an alliance: The feds will use the gangster’s tips to take down his Mafia rivals, in return for a pledge to look the other way where Bulger’s own crimes are concerned. Unfortunately, Connolly’s neighborhood loyalties and zeal to eradicate Boston’s Mob blind him to the danger Bulger poses. While stringing along his new federal pals, Bulger muscles his way into the city’s underworld power vacuum, becoming a true kingpin with a finger in everything from narcotics to IRA terrorism.
Based on the nonfiction book of the same name, Black Mass presents Bulger’s tale as an archetypal tragedy of hubris run amok and lesser evils mutating into unstoppable monsters. It’s a darkly diverting but excessively familiar sort of crime epic, with neither Cooper nor the screenplay exhibiting much interest in jolting the story off of its predictable, trope-cluttered track. The film generally wastes its huge, talented cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Julianne Nicholson, Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard, and Corey Stoll appear, among others. This leaves Depp to provide a welcome stripe of almost alien malice, which is jarring, but also Black Mass’ most distinctive element.
Black Mass opens on Friday, September 18 in wide release.
