Black Mass mess

There’s no doubt Jimmy Whitey Bulger was infamous, notorious and for the reasons he was both, worthy of a biopic. The cast is spectacular, both in talent and performance. Joel Edgerton, Jesse Plemons and Dakota Johnson all flash in their roles. The obvious star is Johnny Depp, who is cold and terrifying in his transformative performance as Bulger.

 

That’s the good stuff.

I’ve written before about the difficulty of biopics – the greatest problems lie in identifying how much and exactly what parts of a person’s life to focus on in the scope of two hours. This is where Black Mass becomes a mess.

I found myself wondering why I wasn’t more engaged – not a good place to be in while watching the film. I had been looking forward to the screening for months. I really like crime stories and the exploration of the dark side of humanity. The sets are fine. South Boston looks appropriately rough and aged. The acting, as mentioned, is quite good. But what about that story…?

The movie opens with Whitey loyalist Kevin Weeks (Plemons) preparing to give testimony to federal agents about Bulger. In other words, he’s about to do the worst thing you can do in gangster life – be a rat. It may be that the writers, director or whomever else was involved in the creative decision making, wanted to highlight this irony, as Whitey is an infamous rat who walked a strange line of giving info on an Italian gang and simultaneously running a crime empire of his own. But if there’s one thing the great gangster films focus on, it’s family. And there’s a rich family life to be explored here as Whitey’s brother, Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch), is his antithesis, a clean and polished State Senator. This is the story left as a side story, rather than a central focus, that is, to me, the biggest missed opportunity of the film.

The decision-makers of the film seem to believe that Whitey’s brutality would be enough to draw the viewer along. And it is shocking, for the moment it happens, at least. The resonance, however, is missing in the lack of humanity and ability to relate to Whitey on a grounded level. There was more emphasis put on a childhood friendship with John Connoly (Joel Edgerton) who became a FBI agent and served as Whitey’s path to slipping under the radar.

And so it goes, violence without humanity is largely forgettable. It’s not that Black Mass is a terrible movie, it’s that it so glaringly misses the greatness is could be.

Resonance Rating: 3 out of 5