Black Mass has Redbox Written All Over it

Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta laugh it up during...
oh wait, that's Johnny Depp and co. from Black Mass

       There are definitely worse ways to waste two hours in a multiplex than watching Black Mass, like sitting through Fantastic Four without a bottle of Jack on purpose.  Anyone who had a Scarface poster in their dorm room will probably have a good time with director Scott Cooper’s old-fashioned but sobering gangster tale, which tells the story of infamous Bostonian sociopath Whitey Bulger in grizzly detail.  Complete with an all-in performance from Johnny Depp and a collection of strong character actors popping up like Whack-a-Mole, here is a movie that knows it has a good subject and also has no interest in rewriting the book on gangster movies.  What we end up with is a mixed bag of familiar material and Johnny Depp fighting off the urge to go all the way over the top, leaving us quite a ways off from living up to its potential despite a fairly inspired opening act. 

       The great Roger Ebert once wrote about how if the mafia didn’t exist it would have to be invented.  A guy like Whitey Bulger fits right into the equation, as movies have long celebrated monsters in various forms and here is a natural for the big screen.  Though the startling blue eyes and dead tooth get distracting at times, Depp finds a menacing balance between an all-out psychopath and a man who is steadfast in his loyalty to his family.  As he joins forces with FBI agent John Connolly (played here by Joel Edgerton with a similar role from Matt Damon in The Departed), Bulger quickly takes over the Southie district with relative ease…mainly by beating and/or killing people in broad daylight and looking real tough.  All with the backing of the FBI, sort of. 

      Unfortunately we’ve been here many times before in the genre, leaving us with little to grasp onto other than Depp’s steady descent into a paranoid and murderous freefall as the head of a meekly developed crime syndicate.  All his cronies and hoodlums at his side seem like they might have interesting tales of their own, though the screenplay is so obsessed with Bulger’s profile as a monster that we never find out about anything else other than his rise (or plight).  Jesse Plemons, who quickly has shown an uncanny ability to play the violently disturbed (see “Breaking Bad”), has a few of the best moments on screen as a Bulger confidant, though he’s mostly tossed aside for the bulk of the film as an afterthought. The same goes for Bulger’s brother, a real life senator played by Benedict Cumberbatch, and his go-to right hand man, Steve Flemmi (Rory Cochrane).  After drawing us in with some chilling early scenes that make us feel like we’re having a beer down the bar from Whitey Bulger, Black Mass settles into a monotone that places much of the movie on autopilot. 

       The problem is that we already know from the trailer that Bulger was a notorious mass murdering gangster, which makes much of the film play like a horror movie without the uncertainty of where the killer is.  Though nearly all gangster movies have to sit in the shadow of Scorsese’s best entries in the genre, Black Mass can’t avoid the comparisons to The Departed because it tells different sides of the same story.  While Scorsese’s film may not have deserved a Best Picture Oscar, it was still an inspired drama bursting with energy and urgency, the two elements most notably missing from Black Mass.  Even one of the most inspired scenes in Black Mass feels almost lifted from Goodfellas, as Depp grills an FBI agent about why he so easily gave up the family recipe for his steak sauce during a barbecue.  I half-expected Joe Pesci to show up and ask what the f*ck was so funny, which might have proved more compelling. 

Bottom line:  Depp fans might enjoy seeing him in something other than a pirate costume and gangster aficionados have plenty to chew on, though anyone expecting a great film or entertainment might want to put this one on the Redbox list instead.