Black Mass

Rating: 2/10 (7 September 2016)

I had really been looking forward to Scott Cooper's 2015 feature Black Mass. I heard so much positive feedback about Johnny Depp's role, and never finding a reason to enjoy his work, I was hopeful to finally see what I had been missing with this actor. Also starring Joel Edgerton and Benedict Cumberbatch, Black Mass explores the life of infamous crime boss, Whitey Bulger. What was expected to be an interesting look at the life of one of the most elusive criminals in American history, turned into a movie trying too hard to be a Martin Scorsese picture.
James 'Whitey' Bulger (Johnny Depp) Irish mob boss turned F.B.I. informant, was at the top of his game in 1970's Boston. When Bulger's interests began to be threatened in his native Boston by infiltrating Italian mobs, he stopped at nothing to keep his reign. Bulger had a career, if you could call it that, filled with soapbox discussions against those associates of his that expelled information. Yet, when Bulger was threatened, that is exactly what he did, shared information with the F.B.I., became an informant and only protected himself and his interests. Of course, being responsible for the death of dozens of people Bulger is no moral compass, but he quickly abandoned his vow of secrecy when it served him. Black Mass shows Bulger's rise to power, his time as a top crime boss and the many ways that title allowed him to control nearly every aspect of Boston, and his eventual arrest just 5 years ago.
I found most things about this film a terrible miss. So much hype arose around Depp's portrayal of the infamous crime lord, I thought there was no way it could be wrong. Depp's acting was good, but nothing worth changing my opinion of him being a mediocre, yet overrated, actor. I have a notebook's worth of questions for the makeup department responsible for Depp's look in Black Mass. His makeup was atrocious and so overdone that it was distracting every time he was on screen. I would have appreciated more if Depp didn't look exactly like Bulger, and instead looked like he had an actual face. In addition to the horrible makeup, the blue contacts Depp wore looked like something out of a science fiction film. I get it, Bulger has blue eyes and Depp needed blue eyes for the film, but a couple shades lighter on the contacts would have still conveyed Bulger's blue eyes without the unrealistic glow-in-the-dark product we see on screen. I'm almost always a Benedict Cumberbatch fan, but the forced unnatural Boston accent he butchered throughout the film was another horrible distraction throughout. The whole film was off, and I suspect that largely has to do with Scott Cooper's attempts to create something Scorsese-esque. Everything about this film from the cinematography to the characterization of the actors felt like they were trying to imitate Goodfellas. There's only one Goodfellas, and there's only one Scorsese. Black Mass suffered from poor pacing, was lacking in even one character that the audience can attach themselves to, and was just plain boring. No mafia classic in the making here, Black Mass is sure to disappear without a trace.