A tad two-dimensional, sad to say. Good, yes, but ...

Rating: 6/10 (9 October 2016)

There's something oddly flat about Black Mass, a take on the life of Jimmy 'Whitey' Bulger, the notorious Chicago gang leader, but it didn't really occur to me until I'd seen the film. The film is structured more or less in flashback, with various of Bulger's henchmen, who really have nothing to lose, opening up to the FBI about their boss's various crimes, which include a long list of murders.
So we get scenes of Bulger as he sets out and as he is recruited by an old school chum who just happens to be an FBI hero as an informant. Bulger, who can't abide 'rats' and who has killed men merely for arguing with him, doesn't, of course, see it that way and likes to regard his relationship with the FBI as 'an arrangement'. But whatever you call it, it played very much in his favour. The pitch was that as the FBI is more concerned with bringing down organised Mafia crime in the north of the city, it will turn a blind eye to the nefarious dealings of the 'Southey' Bulger as long as he feeds them information to help bring down the Mafia.
Then we move on a few years to Bulger, under the protection of his FBI handler, being far more established in the Southside and making a pretty penny. We move on again to a later version of Bulger, this time involved in the murder of a businessman he is working with. And on it goes. It's all very interesting and very well done, and Johnny Depp especially, made up to such an extent that you hardly recognise the man, does a good job of creeping us out. And yet . . .
Given that the relationship Bulger had with his corrupt FBI buddy is central to the film (and which was the case in real life – the bent FBI agent is now serving 40 years in clink), it is hard not to compare Black Mass with Martin Scorsese's The Departed, which covers the same ground, but which fleshes out the subject matter by introducing a story and a new character, another Southey FBI man who works undercover as part of the Bulger character's gang to expose the mole the FBI begin to believe they have in their ranks.
That is partly why The Departed scored where Black Mass just doesn't: despite the murders, despite the creepy scenes involving Bulger, despite everything there isn't really that much too Black Mass. In many ways it could be a documentary. And to be honest we want more than just a documentary, we want a story and sadly Black Mass doesn't give us a story in the film sense.
It is well-made, though and doesn't deserve to be written off because it isn't as good as Scorsese's The Departed. It's just that it's a shame it isn't quite a bit better.