- UK release: November 2015
- Director: Scott Cooper · Writers: Mark Mallouk; Jez Butterworth
- Studio / distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures; Cross Creek Pictures
- Genre: Biographical crime drama / gangster film · Runtime: 123 minutes (BBFC 15)
- Main cast: Johnny Depp (Donnie Brasco, Public Enemies) as Whitey Bulger; Joel Edgerton (Warrior, Animal Kingdom) as John Connolly; Benedict Cumberbatch (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) as Billy Bulger; Dakota Johnson as Lindsey
- IMDb: 6.9 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 73% critics / 68% audience · My rating: 8 / 10
Johnny Depp has spent the better part of a decade hiding behind hats, eyeliner and broad accents, and the running complaint has been that you can always see him enjoying the costume. Black Mass is the film that takes the costume away. The pale eyes, the receding hairline, the bad teeth: it is still a transformation, but for once it points inward rather than out. This is the South Boston of Whitey Bulger, and Scott Cooper has made a watchful, patient gangster picture that knows exactly which films it is standing in the shadow of.
The setup
Whitey Bulger (Johnny Depp) runs the Winter Hill Gang in 1970s Boston, a smaller fish than the Italian mafia across town but a more frightening one up close. His childhood friend John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) has grown up to be an FBI agent, and Connolly has an idea that will make both their careers: if Bulger feeds the Bureau enough to bury the Italians, the Bureau will look the other way while Bulger does as he pleases. What begins as a transaction curdles into something neither man controls, as the protection turns Bulger loose and Connolly slides from handler to accomplice. The brother of a state senator, an FBI informant, and one of the most feared men in the city all turn out to be the same person.
The cast
Depp is the reason to see it, and he resists every temptation to make Bulger likeable. There is charm here, but it is the charm of a man working out whether to trust you or kill you, and the film’s best scene is a dinner-table exchange about a family recipe that turns to ice in a single beat. It is the most disciplined work he has done since Donnie Brasco, and it is no accident that both films put him on the wrong side of the law without the make-up budget of his blockbuster years. Joel Edgerton may be quietly giving the better performance, all sweat and false confidence as Connolly talks himself deeper into a hole. Benedict Cumberbatch makes a credible Boston politician out of Billy Bulger, the respectable brother who keeps his distance and his deniability, and the bench behind them, the foot soldiers and FBI men, is filled with sharp, lived-in faces.
The craft
Cooper directs with restraint, which is the right call and occasionally a frustrating one. Masanobu Takayanagi shoots Boston in cold browns and greys, the colour palette of a city that never quite warms up, and the violence arrives without warning and leaves without ceremony. There is no operatic build to the killings here; people are simply alive and then they are not, and the camera does not linger to make a meal of it. Junkie XL’s score stays low and tense rather than swelling. It is a film of held breath and small rooms, and Cooper trusts faces and silence to carry the dread. The framing device, with former associates giving evidence to investigators, keeps the structure clear without ever feeling like a crutch.
How it stacks up
The comparisons are unavoidable, and the film knows it. Goodfellas hangs over every American gangster picture, and The Departed already mined this exact Boston soil, Irish mob and corrupted lawmen and all. Set against Scorsese’s restless energy, Black Mass can look static, less interested in momentum than in atmosphere. The fairer comparison is Donnie Brasco, another study of a friendship that becomes a trap, told at a human rather than a mythic scale. Cooper is not trying to out-Scorsese anyone. He is making a colder, smaller film about how a city lets a monster operate in plain sight, and on those terms it holds together.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics are sitting around 73%, audiences a little lower, and the consensus is that the film is good rather than great, lifted by Depp above material that plays it safe. That is a reasonable reading. The script does keep Bulger at arm’s length, declining to explain him, and some viewers will want the engine to rev harder than Cooper lets it. But I think the reserve is deliberate and largely earned. A flashier film would have made Bulger more entertaining and less frightening, and the restraint is what stops this from being a greatest-hits reel of gangster beats.
Verdict
This lands above the consensus for me because I value atmosphere, control and a central performance that commits without showing off, and Black Mass has all three. It is not reinventing the genre, and anyone expecting the velocity of Goodfellas will find it deliberately cool to the touch. What it offers instead is menace, a city you can feel, and Depp reminding everyone what he can do when nobody hands him a hat to hide under. It is a film I would happily watch again on a dark evening, and that rewatchability, plus the craft underneath it, carries it. 8⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: Black Mass arrived on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK in spring 2016 and has since settled into its reputation as one of the stronger gangster films of its decade and, for a long stretch, the last reminder of how good Johnny Depp could be in a serious role before his off-screen troubles overtook the conversation. It now streams on the usual rental and subscription platforms depending on region, and pairs naturally with The Departed for a double bill of corrupt-Boston cinema.
BBFC content advice
Rated 15 by the BBFC for strong bloody violence, very strong language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: The strong violence is set in the context of brutal gangland rivalries and includes beatings, as well as execution-style shootings and stranglings. The violence is bloody, but the focus is on its cold efficiency rather than its detail or gory consequences.
Language: There is frequent strong language (‘fk’, ‘motherfker’, ‘c**ksucker’) with mild and moderate bad language including uses of ‘damn’, ‘Christ’, ‘piss’, ‘shit’, ‘ass’, ‘jerking me off’, ‘jerk off’, ‘retard’, ‘prick’, ‘faggot’, ‘dick’ and ‘whore’.
Additional issues: There is also brief sight of hard drug use and a crude reference to oral sex.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
