{"id":4089,"date":"2015-09-18T05:10:40","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T12:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=4089"},"modified":"2015-09-18T05:11:50","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T12:11:50","slug":"review-black-mass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=4089","title":{"rendered":"Review: BLACK MASS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>\"nofixbutton\"<\/a>\u201cHow could you be so cold?\u201d James \u201cWhitey\u201d Bulger asks the mother of his child as they sit together in the cafeteria of a Boston hospital.\u00a0 It\u2019s the mid to late 1970s, and upstairs their young boy lives only with the assistance of tubes and machines.<\/p>\n

That statement pretty much sums up \u201cBlack Mass,\u201d a well-acted and produced film that is so cold that viewers might reach for a blanket.\u00a0 It\u2019s and interesting failure that has its origin in the question that the producers had to ask prior to going into production: What story do we tell?<\/p>\n

Instead of focusing their efforts on a particular event that defined their subject or conveyed a profound message, Director Scott Cooper (\u201cCrazy Heart\u201d) working from a screenplay by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth travels through two, possibly three decades of Bulger\u2019s criminal life.\u00a0 We follow the rise of Whitey (Johnny Depp) and an FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) as they become linked for selfish reasons.\u00a0 Neither man appears charismatic with Connolly coming off as a bit of dull blade.\u00a0 Both grew up in South Boston and Connolly hints that they have a history together. Something is mentioned that Whitey helped Connolly out in a fight as a child, but this is never explicitly shown to us.\u00a0 And keeping their bond vague proves to be frustrating.<\/p>\n

What is more interesting is Whitey\u2019s relationship with his younger brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch), who is the president of the Massachusetts state senate.\u00a0 Billy is a rising political star who turns a blind eye to his brother\u2019s wrong-doing.\u00a0 Eventually, this willful ignorance will take down Billy, but that story is left for another movie.<\/p>\n

Whitey\u2019s ascent to crime boss is told at a reserved distance.\u00a0 We meet Whitey as though we are sitting across the room and observing him or worse, reading a non-fiction account about his exploits. There\u2019s very little context of the time or Whitey\u2019s place in it.<\/p>\n

We get talk about vending or gaming machines, and there are scenes involving beat-downs and obvious extortion and protection rackets.\u00a0 At one point, we even see a newspaper headline that has Whitey taking part in a $14 million lottery jackpot.\u00a0 But these are glimpses that pass too quickly to be fully absorbed.\u00a0 And by the time we get to Whitey\u2019s murderous involvement with World Jai Alai, viewers may be reaching information overload.<\/p>\n

Much has been said in the media about Depp\u2019s return to serious dramatic acting.\u00a0 And here, first and foremost, his heavy makeup is impressive but very hard to dismiss.\u00a0 The performance, which is more than mimicry, is strong but whether it\u2019s make-up job or the character\u2019s personality that holds him back is hard to determine.\u00a0 We never get inside James \u201cWhitey\u201d Bulger, and the lack of intimacy is pervasive throughout the film.<\/p>\n

Joel Edgerton, also, looks the part, but his handling of Connolly is odd.\u00a0 He never seems to make eye-contact with anyone.\u00a0 And his dialogue is so basic that the character comes off as not credible, a simpleton, who could never construct the masterful scheme that permits Whitey to become an Irish mob kingpin.\u00a0 The FBI looks like a bunch of macho dimwits lacking in basic detective and investigative skills.\u00a0 Perhaps Edgerton is miscast here\u2014we know he can connect with audiences, but here that connection is missing.<\/p>\n

But the biggest miss in \u201cBlack Mass\u201d is that it isn\u2019t entertaining.\u00a0 Compare Martin Scorsese\u2019s Oscar winning and irresistibly sweeping \u201cThe Departed\u201d that also deals with a South Boston Irish gang (a fictional one, likely based in part on Bulger\u2019s Winter Hill Gang).\u00a0 Without glorifying the criminal lifestyle, \u201cThe Departed\u201d manages to weave a massively entertaining story containing a few significant colorful characters with, at least, some redeeming and entertaining qualities.\u00a0 And Scorsese managed to bring things to a somewhat familiar but meaningful conclusion.<\/p>\n

By contrast \u201cBlack Mass\u201d is positively morose and even joyless as Whitey kills and threatens his way up.\u00a0 Why anyone followed him is a nagging question.\u00a0 Sure, if you didn\u2019t fall in line, you\u2019d end up buried under a bridge, but even criminal leadership requires some level of charisma.\u00a0 Nothing in \u201cBlack Mass\u201d suggests that Whitey had any likable qualities even among his criminal cohorts.\u00a0 He lives a spartan lifestyle, and keeps everyone at a distance.\u00a0 If this is how the man really was, that is perfectly fine, but the movie should probably have found its focus elsewhere.\u00a0 And by trying to tell such a broad story, \u201cBlack Mass\u201d really has no conclusion. Whitney Bulger was captured after being on the lam for some 12 years. It\u2019s all somewhat anti-climatic.<\/p>\n

Filmmakers who make movies about crime bosses have to be careful not to fall in love with their subjects.\u00a0 But in trying to fairly and accurately tell the true story of a criminal, a filmmaker has to be equally careful to remember that he or she is working within the narrative cinematic form. And that means that many of the arguably boring details could be left to the documentary format.\u00a0 \u201cBlack Mass\u201d fails to make maximum use of cinematic story-telling techniques that translate the central theme and message to the viewer.\u00a0 And with this much potential that might be some kind of crime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ambitious but Anti-Climatic \u201cBlack Mass\u201d is Interesting Miss\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4089"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4093,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4089\/revisions\/4093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}