MOVIE REVIEW: Black Mass (2015)

It's an awfully tricky task for a director to make a film centered around gangsters, particularly those who are based on real-life individuals, while not glamorizing them or their actions. Just as the villain is often more interesting than the hero, the cinematic gangster is often more charismatic than the federal investigators whose job it is to hunt him down. Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather made the audience sympathize with, and essentially root for, a family of criminals. Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas took a slightly different approach, showing a decidedly less romantic view of the mob, and yet the film is still made with great style, energy and humor that it borders on glamorizing a bunch of mobsters throughout it's two and a half hour running time. Scorsese has always defended his approach to his depiction of the mob, indicating that he has to show the allure of this lifestyle or else it wouldn't make any sense as to why it's so appealing to these guys in the first place. That's a fair point, and it's a great film, but there's no doubt that this approach has also had the unfortunate effect of being misunderstood by certain members of its audience.

The reason I focus on Goodfellas in particular here is because it seems to be the go-to example when comparing any mob movie made in the last 25 years. It's been undoubtedly influential to a wide array of crime films that range from Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights and, more recently, David O. Russell's American Hustle, along with the HBO series The Sopranos. The trailers for Scott Cooper's new film Black Mass certainly gave the impression that this film was going to be the Whitey Bulger story done in the same style as Scorsese's film, showing a dinner conversation that was eerily reminiscent of Joe Pesci's now famous "Am I funny?" speech. Adding to this was the 1970s and 1980s period setting, along with the flashy costumes and an uneasy tension apparent throughout the clip, it would be easy to get the impression that this film was going to be another highly energetic tour through the criminal underworld of South Boston. Having seen Black Mass, the results are quite different from what the previews would lead you to believe.

The story is pretty well documented by this point, at least to anyone who is familiar with the history of Whitey Bulger and the Winter Hill Gang. If not, however, here's a brief recap: The film opens with an FBI agent interviewing gang member Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons), who promises to tell the FBI what he knows about Bulger and the his gang as long as he's not considered a snitch. From here we jump back to 1975, where James "Whitey" Bulger (Johnny Depp) rules the streets of South Boston. His brother, William Bulger (Benedict Cumberbatch) is the President of the Massachusetts State Senate, while his boyhood friend John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) has recently returned to Boston to work for their section of the FBI. Connolly makes a deal with Bulger to help give him and the Bureau information on the Angiulo Brothers, a powerful Italian-American crime group with ties to the mafia who happen to be in conflict with Bulger and his Winter Hill Gang. At first scoffing at the idea of giving information to the feds, Bulger eventually gives in after the Angiulo Brothers kill one of the Winter Hill members. This, he concedes, will let the FBI get rid of his gang's enemies in the Italian mob while also allowing his own criminal activities to be ignored at the federal level. As these crimes escalate, and new leadership comes in, Connolly is faced with the task of trying to convince his superiors that there's no problem with everything going despite all the evidence to the contrary.

It's this central story, between Bulger working with the FBI and Connolly letting many of the Winter Hill Gang's criminal activities slide under the rug, that was used as the primary inspiration for the relationship between Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson's characters in Martin Scorsese's The Departed. In many ways, Black Mass could have taken that same story and used it as the focus here, but the filmmakers likely, and understandably, wanted to separate themselves from Scorsese's film. Instead, Black Mass has a very broad and generalized version of events that happened over the span of 20 years, between 1975 until Bulger's plan to go in hiding in the mid-1990s. As a result the story feels a bit like it's merely skimming the surface, which comes as a detriment at times. The ensemble is full of excellent actors who are somewhat underutilized, such as Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard, Rory Cochrane, Corey Stoll, Julianne Nicholson, Juno Temple, and Dakota Johnson. Each character pops up at one point or another, and then often just disappears without a trace, despite good performances from each cast member (not to mention solid Boston accents all around). Naturally, for a film that's trying to cover 20 years worth of material in the span of two hours, this feeling of generalization is bound to happen. However, a more tightly focused narrative, or perhaps even a longer running time for a story this epic in length, would have likely proven more beneficial for the supporting characters whose stories feel somewhat sidelined or incomplete here.

Still, these shortcomings aside, Black Mass is one of the grimmer gangster films I've seen in quite some time. This is the third feature by director Scott Cooper, whose previous films included 2009's Crazy Heart and 2013's underrated Out of the Furnace, and it retains a similarly grim atmosphere that his second feature had. The first 75 minutes of Black Mass has a somber tone that isn't often seen in films from this genre, which often follow the Goodfellas method of flashy camera techniques and a fast-paced story. Here, the pace is much slower and more reflective, which is only appropriate considering this story is really told from the perspective of those who worked for Bulger during his years in power. It isn't until the final half hour, where the film begins to show elements of a horror film, that the story takes on a darker intensity as Bulger's psychotic personality comes even more to the forefront than before. Much of this is also aided by the eerie and atmospheric score by Tom Holkenborg (also known as Junkie XL), which gives a sense of dread and, at times, impending doom throughout.

All of which comes down to Johnny Depp's performance: He's very good. With recent critical and box office flops such as Transcendence, The Lone Ranger and The Tourist, this is the most engaging I've found Depp to be on screen in many years. It could be easy to look at his performance as having the makeup do most of the work for him, but he shows more sides to Bulger than what might be expected at first glance and fully inhabits the character. The screenplay by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth doesn't really allow the viewer to get inside the head of Bulger or understand what makes him tick, but I think that was intentional. Rather than identifying with him, and running that risk of glamorizing his personality, he's often seen as a cold, calculating and very distant individual who has completely lost any sense of morality. The only time you see him engage in any normal social interaction is with his son early on, as well as his moments with his family or a brief encounter with an elderly woman on the street. Instead, as mentioned before, this is really a story that's recounted by those who were in the Winter Hill Gang, and it's perhaps appropriate that Bulger is viewed this way and that we don't get an in-depth psychological study of his personality.

At the end of it all, Black Mass doesn't necessarily raise the bar for crime movies or threaten something like The Godfather Part II from being dethroned as the pinnacle of what mobster movies can achieve. What it does have, however, is plenty of excellent performances, particularly by Johnny Depp in top form and Joel Edgerton, and a darker and very unromantic look at the criminal underworld that many films of its kind don't want to dwell on. I would be surprised if anyone would accuse this film of glamorizing Bulger and his actions, or leave with the impression that he's some kind of figure to be emulated. It's a generalized version of events that perhaps skims the surface, which robs the story of achieving greatness, but it undoubtedly creates a specific mood that lingers in the mind after it's finished. That's more than what can be said for most movies these days.

Rating: 3/4