Characters without Character

Rating: 6/10 (3 October 2015)

Although I enjoy short movies, this 2 hour film needed to be 3 hours in order to work. Much of the movie is spent introducing characters who are quickly killed off or disappear before the audience gets to know them. The back story for movies such as The Departed helped the audience see the progression of the movie's characters to help them see the motivation of why and what the character is all about. We see the roles played by Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio well defined before we even see the opening credits. We see their past, where they came from, and home they were motivated to become the people they were. Black Mass fails at this miserably. We are introduced to many characters in such a short period of time. Each time, the audience easily looses track on who the main character is because we jump around to so many different people. For example, the movie starts with introducing Kevin Weeks. We start to take a journey with this character in the third person and then quickly leave this character completely to meet more characters. This is a story about James 'Whitey' Bulger. Then again, we spend more time with John Connolly only to loose any connection on what makes either one tick. The audience sees Whitey experience the death of many of his loved ones, but we do not see or hear of anything prior to the movie that would explain who and what he is and how he became that way. The same goes for Connolly's motivation. Just because he's from the neighborhood does not clearly define his motives, let alone his bond and loyalty to Whitey. The side story of the relationship with the Bulger Brothers fall short. The 800 lbs. elephant in the room is not really talked about as the two characters hardly share any screen time. Also, Black Mass does not have a single positive female character. Each is either limited in what they can bring to the story let alone a victim. Leave it to 4 male writers to fail at writing anything positive for a woman. Sadly, Black Mass is one of the best performances Johnny Depp has had in over ten years. The period piece of Boston / Miami in the 70's and 80's is great. The overall story of Black Mass is interesting, but falls short. The reason is simple. The main character is never defined. Although Whitey Bulger is the main star, we spend less than half the movie away from him as we are bored with side stories that are connected but have no connection with the audience. Black Mass could have been great, but did not have enough time.