Strong performances in familiar plot

Rating: 7/10 (22 May 2016)

Black Mass (2015)
Well, Johnny Depp is amazing—almost unrecognizable in this role as a psychopathic Irish mobster. And the vivid realism of lat 1970s and 1980s Boston is impressive—really gorgeous and believable. These are the strengths.
The story is, however, another mobster movie where one group is out to get another, and there are betrayals and revenge killings and beatings and a kind of unraveling of the underworld as it gets more and more extreme. Sometimes there's pathos or ironic beauty, but this is no "Godfather" nor "Goodfellas." The characters blend together and so we never quite identify with anyone. And Depp plays the main bad man and, unlike Marlon Brando (for example) he lacks anything even remotely human or admirable.
So the viewer is left cold, watching things happen at a distance. It's not unemotional—sometimes it's horrible and shocking—but it's not about feeling for the characters in their brutal, calculating desperate situation. And there is a lot of violence of a very unflinching kind, harder to take than, say, Tarantino's where it's over the top and theatrical.
I think this is a kind of good movie that just doesn't rise above. And there are so many movies like this it makes it unnecessary. Good, yes, but old territory.