Gangster Movies Are Officially Dead

Rating: 4/10 (4 October 2015)

It's like every gangster movie made in the past 15 years is just a weak pastiche of previous gangster movies. Nothing new has been added to the genre in a long time and this film certainly isn't adding anything but canned dialogue and a pointless story. "F you, you F-ing F bal. I'll kill you."
For me the roles have reversed between TV and movies. TV, once the ugly step-sister of feature films, has completely usurped the position of movies in modern pop culture. Movies just seemed overly formulaic, the character development is either lacking or forced, and there just isn't room for surprises.
We start off with one of the central character's thugs being interviewed. A promising start but this kid all but disappears after the first couple of scenes. Why? Because there are WAY too many characters introduced in the film. The wives, the bosses, the cop's partner, the hit man, the cop's boss, the DA, and on and on. In a TV series this would be possible but not in a two hour movie (that seemed like four hours). How about having a better tory and many fewer characters?
And just look at all those movie stars. Movie stars, at least to me, are a complete liability and watching a bunch of tired hacks sleep walk through an even more tired script like Black Mass isn't my idea of a good time. "Look everyone, it's Johnny Depp! He's acting! He's really acting!" I just can't get beyond the fact that I'm looking at Johnny Depp and can never get to the point where I'm seeing a character. I also couldn't get past the fact that it looked like he was dressed up for Halloween as Freddie Krueger. I'll take the TV no-name actors every time.
And please just stop it with the accents! I have dedicated my life to learning languages and nothing mugs me more than a phony accent. I have worked to perfect my accents in French and Spanish for years and years yet I would never try to pass myself off as a native.
As I've said before, I wouldn't trade one episode of Breaking Bad for all of the movies I've seen in the past three years. I couldn't wait for this movie to end.