Black Mass

If you’ve lived most of your life in Boston, as I have, you most likely know the whole story of James "Whitey" Bulger forwards and backwards. You know how he rose from small time hood to mafia kingpin, due in part to his status as a “top echelon informant” for the FBI. You know about the “protection” he received from agent John Connolly, a fellow South Boston native who grew up idolizing the fearless, streetwise Bulger. You know about his relationship with his brother Billy, who became the most powerful politician in Massachusetts around the same time Whitey was murdering his way to the top. You know about the many victims of his crimes, as well as the personal way he took care of his “hits.” If you aren’t from Boston you still may know the broad details of this story, because Bulger was number two on the FBI’s most wanted list for many years (number one was Bin Ladin). Or you saw Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed, in which Jack Nicolson’s character was loosely based on the Irish racketeer.

Regardless of how much or how little you know about Bulger, chances are you know everything included in Black Mass. It’s a fairly run-of-the mill mob movie, despite the distinctive dynamics between Bulger and Connolly.  Directed by Steve Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) and based on the non-fiction book Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal, by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, this handsome production boasts terrific performances from nearly everyone in its ensemble cast.  Johnny Depp comes out of hibernation and buries himself in the central role. You’d think he’d be way too movie star pretty to play Bulger, yet somehow he becomes totally credible within about 5 minutes.

Joel Edgerton is equally dynamic as Connolly. Not only does the Aussie actor nail the Boston accent, his Connolly works as both a comedic and a tragic figure, without ever swinging too far in either direction. The stellar supporting cast includes Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, W. Earl Brown, Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard, Dakota Johnson, Juno Temple, and Julianne Nicholson in a rather thankless role that she makes the absolute most of (we need to see this actress more!). Only the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch as Billy Bulger feels miscast.

Cooper keeps the mafia glamorization and stylistic sensationalism to a bare minimum, favoring instead a procedural approach to the story. Though filled with memorable scenes, Black Mass is the direct opposite of pictures like The Departed and Goodfellas in that it doesn’t draw attention to its cinematic craft and maintains a restrained, low energy approach. This certainly doesn’t make it better than those pictures, but the quiet, deliberately paced approach makes for an interesting counterpart to typical docudramas about real-life gangsters.

Ironically, Depp, who often bases his performances on other famous personalities and sounds exactly like Jack Nicholson in this film (close your eyes during some of his lines, it’s uncanny), is the best thing in the picture. It’s been a long time since this actor gave us a memorable, nuanced, non-audience-winking performance. His indestructible likability makes for a very odd fit with the despicable serial killer; but somehow the combination works perfectly—creating a unique villain/protagonist who’s mesmerizing whenever he’s on screen. Much of the credit should go to the make-up department; they transformed Depp and his colleagues into credible street level guys from1970s Boston, showing us the effects of violence and aging with impressive flair. The not-exactly-subtle make-up feels both cartoonish and strangely appropriate. 

Most everything about the picture feels correct, even the Boston accents that can trip up actors not native to America’s east coast. The only real problem (and it’s a major one) is the story isn’t all that engaging. The large number of characters aren’t very well integrated into the narrative structure, and Bulger is neither a heroic nor a tragic figure. The things that made him most distinctive have more to do with Connelly’s ambition than his own. And the main reason Bulger became such a legendary figure in the annals of crime—the sixteen year disappearing act he pulled—isn’t part of this movie. 

We learn no more about what made Whitey Bulger tick from Black Mass than can be found in any of the countless books, documentaries, and long form articles that have been written over the years.  In the end, this film performs the same function as Joe Berlinger’s documentary Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger from the previous year. It dramatizes the problematic, codependent, often cozy relationship between law enforcement and the criminal element which the Bulger case exposed, but it doesn’t shine any new light on how these relationships came about or what can be done about them.