Black Mass

In the mid-1970s, James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp), leader of South Boston’s Winter Hill Gang, reconnects with John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), an old friend from the neighborhood who is now an FBI agent. Bulger agrees to supply Connolly with information to crush the Mafia in exchange for protection from prosecution. Given a wide berth as an FBI informant, Bulger increases his power and influence, dropping several bodies along the way all while Connolly and Bulger’s state senator brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch) turn a blind eye.

Given the similar subject matter, Scott Cooper’s adaptation of Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill’s book invites an obvious comparison to The Departed. Mentioning Cooper and Martin Scorsese in the same breath is not nearly as blasphemous as it sounds. The former, like the latter, has a good eye for period detail, a good ear for period music, and a penchant for going to uncomfortable places. But whereas The Departed, boosted by a crazed Jack Nicholson as a fictionalized Bulger, dared to have some fun, Black Mass is, as the title indicates, a somber affair from beginning to end.

Serious, however, is not synonymous with dull, at least not in this context. Depp’s Bulger oozes menace, and all who come into contact with him seem like they are one wrong word away from eating a bullet. Thanks to heavy makeup and a convincing accent, Depp is able to completely disappear into the role. Shedding the vestigial pluckiness of Jack Sparrow, he plays Bulger as brutal, calculating, and ruthlessly opportunistic (The lip service paid to familial devotion and the well-documented racism that was excised from the film make Bulger more human but no less villainous).

Such is the magnitude of his evil that nearly every other character (save for an innocent wife and a few straight arrow Feds) comes across as both a victim and a complicit enabler. Connolly, a career climber and wannabe tough guy, advocates for Bulger to a ludicrous degree, but even this can be read as his slavish determination for upholding the values of his neighborhood. Steve Flemmi (Rory Cochrane), Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemmons), and Johnny Martorano (W. Earl Brown), Bulger’s Winter Hill accomplices, are reduced to mere underlings despite being stone cold killers in their own right. Even Billy Bulger (played ably by Cumberbatch, despite the poor physical resemblance), who spends most of his brief screen time glad-handing voters and avoiding any discussion of his brother’s activities, seems, for all his clout, a man with his hands permanently glued over his ears.

This overstatement serves dramatic purposes well though it does undercut the film’s veracity, as do some fudging of names and dates. A bigger issue here is the paucity of secondary characters, particularly women. While the Winter Hill muscle comes across as somewhat flat, that’s more than can be said for Bulger’s paramour Lindsay Cyr (Dakota Johnson), who drops out of the film relatively early with minimal impact, or for Flemmi’s naïve, doomed street-walking stepdaughter Deborah Hussey (Juno Temple). Only Marianne Connolly (Julianne Nicholson), John’s conflicted wife, shows any kind of agency.

Despite these shortcomings, Black Mass remains a harrowing look at the man who dominated a city and its inhabitants for nearly two decades as well as all those who allowed that to happen. It may not be everyone’s cup of chowdah, but it gives the ghosts of Southie their due.

8/10