"Strictly criminal"

Rating: 7/10 (4 October 2015)

The gangster film is a notoriously hard nut to crack these days, as there's the constant threat of being in somebody's shadow. In reconciling the juggling act of the inherent fun of criminal transgressions and the necessary solemn Hollywood moralizing hangover from the James Cagney days, do you opt for operatic and lyrical (Coppola), showy, stylized and irreverent (Scorsese), or flinty realism (Michael Mann or The Wire)? Even worse – are you audacious enough, in the face of the omnipresent elephant in the room (what is there left to say, apart from the time-worn moral of 'Crime pays until it doesn't'?), to try something new in the pressure to avoid standing on the shoulders of giants, all without cracking under the pressure? Fuggeddaboutit!
Thankfully, director Scott Cooper isn't fussy about trying to turn the genre on its head, focusing less on innovation and more on doing it really well. As such, Black Mass, despite being a tale as old as time, is a steady, solid, immaculately stylistic, and impressively emotive gangster film. Changing the setting to Bahstan (what's The Depahted? This is a fah*kin' TRUE story!) lends fierce energy to the familiar ideologies of family and betrayal in the mob, while structuring the story around retroactive testimonies of Whitey Bulger's former associates lends the film a fresher framework (just don't say it rips off Citizen Kane, if you don't want to be buried under the dahcks).
Cooper is an expert at pacing, injecting bursts of furious violence into innocuous scenes to give a sense of the palpable tension inherent in being in the presence of the temperamentally psychotic Bulger, with everything from offhand comments to bad table manners being grounds for a bullet through the head. Cleverly, however, to counterbalance Bulger's inherent trashiness, Masanobu Takayanagi's crisp cinematography and the engagingly somber musical score by Tom Holkenborg (building off his more bombastic work in this year's Mad Max: Fury Road) lend the film a distinctly classical feel not dissimilar with the title's theological allusions. While the screenplay occasionally dips too liberally into 'trailer sting expositionary one-liners' territory, for the most part, things crackle with enough impressive verisimilitude that, apart from a brief third-act lull, command attention throughout.
Why Cooper decided to shroud Johnny Depp in such distractingly flamboyant makeup and electric blue contact lenses is beyond me (the real Whitey Bulger didn't look that corpse- like), but thankfully Depp is a skilled enough performer to own his sallow lizard look, rather than being out-acted by his makeup. Conversely, this is the liveliest and most riveting we've seen Depp in years of drowning in Disney sequels and spinoffs – charming (the film's most poignant scene is an unassuming Bulger allowing his mother to win against him at gin, or pressing pause on a heist to help an elderly lady carry her groceries up the stairs), haunted, and savage, sometimes all simultaneously, Depp's Whitey Bulger is an incendiary performance, and it would be a genuine shock to see him go unrecognized at this year's Academy Awards.
Keen to not be overshadowed, the stellar ensemble cast all sell their character vignettes with aplomb. Joel Edgerton offers a deliciously jeer-worthy cocktail of simpering and swagger as the FBI agent who enlists Bulger as an informant out of a misplaced sense of childhood reverence, only to be exploited as Bulger bloats his criminal empire under the FBI's nose (the always excellent Kevin Bacon and Adam Scott add gravitas to the grimacing in these FBI interludes). Slightly hammy Bahstan accent aside, Benedict Cumberbatch is thoroughly charismatic with only a whiff of sleaze as Bulger's senatorial brother, while Dakota Johnson is 50 Shades of assertive here, fuming with increasingly fearful contempt, as Edgerton's wife. Rory Cochrane and Jesse Plemons carry an air of sadness as Bulger's second-in-command confidants, ashamed of what they've been sucked into yet aware that failure to commit would mean death, while even Juno Temple is a heartbreaking (single) scene stealer as Cochrane's underage prostitute girlfriend. Finally, in the overacting department, Peter Sarsgaard quivers with barely grounded manic paranoia as a dimwitted Californian witness testifying against Bulger, while Corey Stoll, still exuding Ant-Man levels of nuance (sarcasm), does more yelling than acting as the DA determined to bring down Bulger.
Don't start throwing out comparisons to more revered gangster pics, or Black Mass will only, inevitably, suffer by comparison. Sometimes, it's enough to take a familiar recipe and marinate it in basic ingredients with consummate skill. Just don't disclose the recipe to Whitey Bulger, or that could get you buried real quick. Just sayin'.
-7.5/10