Depp is scary (and scary great) in this mostly-ensemble crime drama

Rating: 7/10 (1 October 2015)

There's a scene in Black Mass where James Bulger (aka Whitey, though you just call him Jimmy, of course) wants to find out what's wrong with John Connolly's wife. He's over for dinner and she's upstairs the whole time, supposedly not feeling well (in reality, she hates his guts, and is growingly resentful of her husband for associating with him). He goes up the stairs and knocks on her door - she's reading The Exorcist, by the way, probably unintentionally getting her in the mood for something frightening - and she opens to door to Jimmy. He touches John's wife's face, holds her neck (or, rather, just barely misses choking her) in checking to see if she's warm or hot or whatever. And it's in a moment like this, not the only one but clear as day, that Depp's performance as Bulger turns into something out of a horror movie: his Bulger is scary as f***, and what's most scary is the seeming lack of anything human outside of the darkness of the soul.
It doesn't happen like that form the start, however; Bulger's darkness deepens as the film goes on - in this version of events, going from about 1975 to maybe the mid 90's or the late 80's - due to the deaths of two of his family members. One of them hits him harder than the other, but with each one he smiles less and less (as one of the informants being interviewed - one of the connecting glues of the narrative is the voice-over testimony of those who built up the Bulger case, only the IRA makes him happy), and he even has the look of Nosferatu. The contact lenses, the flaky white skin, the hair pulled back - this is Depp immersing himself and creating a different kind of crime lord.
While he starts off as a guy we've seen in other movies, as the man who won't take s*** from any low-lifes and has no compunction about beating a guy's head in or shooting a man in broad daylight in a parking lot, somehow his presence grows more ominous in Black Mass. Even the title evokes something that Mario Bava might've made in the 1960's, with only a vague connection to religion. To put it another way, at one point he's lying back, resting with his eyes closed, and his arms and hands over his chest give the impression of a vampire inside of a coffin.
This is a crime epic, however, so he is not the only character of note. On the contrary, it may actually be more FBI agent John Connolly's story, here played by Joel Edgerton, as he is the one who is really having to give some more subtle acting here. OK, maybe not all the time - it's often a nervous, forceful performance, and Edgerton, as he's shown in Great Gatsby and (the best parts of) Exodus, has that to spare - but he is a person who starts off trying to use a connection to his advantage. He's know Bulger, and his brother (a local politician played by Cumberbatch), since they were kids, and there's a kind of street-level-South-Boston loyalty there. Also the fact of, you know, not wanting to p-off a volcanic force like Whitey Bulger. So an 'alliance' is made (not to be confused, were told more than once by Connolly, of 'informant'-like procedure) and a plan is hatched that his department reluctantly agrees to: Bulger gives the FBI info on Italian mob gangs and families, they leave Bulger alone.
It's certain the filmmakers had to leave some details out - it's a two hour film covering decades of criminal activity and rocky investigations - and there are one or two moments things get conflated for dramatic effect, like when Kevin Bacon's FBI chief is about to throw out the whole case and at this exact moment a wire-tap with crucial information on the Italians comes through. But what's impressive to me about Black Mass is that director Scott Cooper and his writers are able to make a possibly convoluted story accessible and exciting and absorbing; only a section in the middle, about a scheme involving Jai-Alai, needs some close attention paid (and even there the presence of Peter Sarsgaard as a drug-addled killer makes things pop and entertaining). But with Connolly, there's an emotional core and conflict that helps to offset the hellish backdrop that comes with Bulger; do we feel sorry for this man, or perhaps enjoy his downfall, which we know will come? Edgerton makes him a little more sympathetic, or just understandable in his actions, than if it had been by another actor, though he's one of a piece of what makes the film work well.
Black Mass, with its brutal killings and violence and deaths that come not unexpectedly but not less in a grisly style, doesn't reach greatness overall, but there's a lot of great things that come about it, individual scenes. Watch as Jimmy and his girlfriend argue as to what to do about their son (Dakota Johnson in a small but pivotal performance, like, good God she can act THIS well), or how Bulger taunts an impressionable Agent Moore at a table with a 'joke' over a family secret recipe. Depp is acting his tail off here - surely his best work since Sweeney Todd - but the rest of the cast is so strong that most of the conventional elements or directing decisions can be overlooked. 7.5/10