Black Mass

The saga of Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger has many elements tailor-made for Hollywood: FBI corruption, political adjacency (if not also corruption), gunrunning for the IRA, a decade-and-a-half manhunt, and just regular gangster stuff. With Bulger’s capture and trials bringing him back to prominence in recent years, the time seems prime for this story to get the thrilling Al Capone or Henry Hill big-screen treatment. But Black Mass declines to take the classic gangster film route, opting instead for a less alluring, more meat-and-potatoes approach that doesn’t stylize or glorify the brutality on display.

Johnny Depp certainly gives a performance to match, in a complete about-face from his hyperactive whimsical roles of late. As Bulger, Depp is one scary dude, his voice a soft-spoken, unmistakably evil growl, his demeanor calm yet absolutely seething like he’s about to snap at any second. When he does finally explode into violence, there’s no release for the audience, and the tension never dies when he’s onscreen. Nor once is he ever sympathetic, even in the obligatory family scenes, or endowed with any Hollywood sensibilities of a sort of moral code, twisted though it may be. It’s a commendable rebuke to the tendency to canonize our famous criminals as pop culture legends instead of the monsters they are, and it single-handedly elevates a picture that is otherwise mostly average filmmaking.

The film’s narrative—depicting Bulger’s 1970s and 80s heyday as the top crime boss in Boston, during which he enjoyed immunity from law enforcement thanks to striking an informant deal with corrupt FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton)—is framed around three of Bulger’s former associates (Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, and W. Earl Brown) relating their boss’ crimes to the Feds after he went on the run. This structure makes for some GoodFellas-esque narrated sequences describing the details of Bulger’s criminal activities. Except, without any of the exhilarating style of Martin Scorsese’s picture, or any other. The underworld depicted here is one of grey, dreary settings, not the lavish, almost enticing hedonistic lifestyle that's come to be associated with the gangster genre.

But, this framing device is only used on and off, and where it’s not utilized for extended periods is where the plotting suffers a bit. The scenes not buoyed by narration seem like little more than random events punctuated by outbursts of violence, with almost no context for viewers without knowledge of the major events in Bulger’s criminal career or their importance (it also touches surprisingly little on his relationship with his Massachusetts State Senator brother, played onscreen by Benedict Cumberbatch). With such a loose structure, the endless scenes of dark, dank interiors get a little repetitive, and the grimness rather lethargic.

Still, on the whole, the gangster portions are solid. It’s the FBI scenes that are truly flawed. Defending Bulger to his superiors, Edgerton’s corrupt agent comes off like an unruly schoolkid trying to talk his way out of the principal’s office. Never do we get the sense of the alleged institutional corruption that overlooked Bulger, nor a convincing depiction of how Connolly managed to trick the whole agency into letting the crime lord stay free. All seem rather incompetent. And while the gangland cast displays a more believable low-key gloom (this life isn’t glamorous to them, just their job), the Feds are all overacting, as if they’re in a contest to see who can do the most outrageous Boston accent.

Black Mass is far from the most detailed and definitive word on the Whitey Bulger story (and Scorsese’s The Departed, which took some inspiration from Bulger’s story, is a much more entertaining movie). But where it’s good, it’s quite good.