Johnny Depp, as Whitey Bulger, is scary.

Rating: 9/10 (18 September 2015)

Scott Cooper, the director who gave us "Crazy Heart," and "Out Of The Furnace" came back with this ambitious film, and I say that because Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger" is among the most famous of all gangsters in the entire history of crime families in this country. His name is up there on the same level as Al Capone and the rest of those scums. So it's good that this movie doesn't glorify Whitey Bulger in any way.
As I've said a thousand times before, I'm a sucker for mob stories and police corruption stories because a). they're a perfect example of a villain, acting nice in front of people but doing other wise behind closed doors and b). the unholy alliance between the two like the one depicted in this film is kind that unfortunately will always continue to happen in many other places. It will always exist, no matter how many crime 'heads' you try to cut off.
BLACK MASS takes instruction from Martin Scorsese's manual book, as does any other gangster movie that has been made since "Goodfellas." It starts out with a young kid who gets to join the Winter Hill gang, but the focus remains on Whitey Bulger, brilliantly played by Johnny Depp, an actor who I think hasn't been in touch with his dark side since 2007's "Sweeney Todd," (let's forget that whole mess "Transcendence" ever happened) so it's nice to have Depp back as the baddie. And boy, as Bulger, Depp immerses himself and strikes fear into the hearts of the people around him. He's like Joe Pesci's Tommy DeVito in "Goodfellas" but times a hundred, BLACK MASS even has Depp's Bulger intimidate a person sitting across from him; that person thinks Bulger is angry at him, reminiscent of Tommy's "What's so funny?" scene. This is Depp's best performance in years.
Those of us fans of gangster movies know how the game is played and so does BLACK MASS, you just know when somebody would get whacked, you just know when somebody says the wrong thing to a boss, you just know when the noose is tightening and their empire starts to crumble. In this case, Joel Edgerton plays FBI agent John Connolly who helps Bulger, hoping that Bulger would help him in return but instead Bulger uses him. The way Edgerton plays his character is that he's not your traditional 'dirty' lawman, he's not planted there by winter hill gang. He's a cocky, incompetent lawman, he in way over his head, the kind of guy who'd rather make excuses than face up to his own blunder and it eventually bites him in the butt.
My thing is that if the government has to settle for torture session or if law enforcement has to settle for cooperating with the mob, if those are their last resort, claiming that there's no other choice, then they're actually just lazy and unwilling to put the time and effort in good old detective police work. BLACK MASS gives you a brutal inside look at one of this country's most notorious monsters.