Black Mass

Dir: Scott Cooper

2015

***

Scott Cooper is a director I really like. 2009's Crazy Heart was great and I thought 2013's Out of the Furnace was one of the best, and most overlooked films of the year. Scott Cooper directing a film about Boston's infamous gangster Whitey Bulger? Brilliant I thought. It is a good film too that I believe explores the truth between Bulger and the FBI, his friendship with childhood friend and FBI agent John Connolly (played brilliantly by Joel Edgerton). However, there is something about the overall film that just doesn't work as well as I think it could have. Bulger was on the run for quite a number of years, part of this was filmed but didn't make the final cut. Personally I think this should have been added to the film, the film itself lengthened and maybe split into two chapters, Full Metal Jacket style. Once we learned who Whitey Bulger is, what he did and how he got involved with the FBI, nothing much else happens. The film may tell it like it was, Johnny Depp and Joel Edgerton have both been congratulated on their realistic performances but the film has very little of the tension I think it warranted. It certainly has its moments but nothing new happens after the first twenty minutes and even though I had no idea who Bulger was before watching, I had correctly predicted the end of the film. One of the other big issues I had with the movie is the visual portrayal of time passing. Nothing really changed, the clothes and hairstyles remained the same as did the decor, people’s cars etc. It wasn't clear or convincing that large amount of time had passed from one scene to the next. It really is all about the performances. Johnny Depp and Joel Edgerton are both good, although both seem to exaggerate their parts somewhat. Both are said to have got their two characters down perfectly though, so I can't really criticize without knowing what the two real men are like. Benedict Cumberbatch and Kevin Bacon are both very good in their supporting roles but for me it is the smaller roles that are the best and most overlooked. W. Earl Brown plays an excellent Johnny Martorano, a notorious hit-man and colleague of Bulger. Peter Sarsgaard has a fantastic but surprisingly short role as a paranoid and unpredictable drug-dealer and Jesse Plemons' performance as bodyguard and the audience’s introduction to the film was quite an eye-opener. However, for me it is Rory Cochrane who deserves the most credit for his portrayal of Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi. The scenes of him back in the 70's saw him as a cold and callous criminal with little regret for what he does - until his step-daughter enters the picture. This is the film's best and most disturbing scene. The audience is then fast-forwarded to an extremely convincing police interview where he admits to all his crimes without flinching once. This is Black Mass at its best and something they could have made more of. I do wonder whether it was Depp’s performance that was too distracting for most people. He has become somewhat of a character actor (a term I dislike but I want for a better description) in recent years. He plays kooky and cartoonish characters, his Bulger performance almost seems like another one of those types of performances, which of course it isn't. Average but enjoyable and something of a missed opportunity.