SYNOPSIS: In 1970s South Boston, FBI Agent John Connolly (Edgerton) persuades Irish mobster Jimmy Bulger (Depp) to collaborate with the FBI in order to eliminate their common enemy: the Italian mob. The drama tells the story of this unholy alliance, which spiraled out of control, allowing Whitey to evade law enforcement while consolidating his power and becoming one of the most ruthless and dangerous gangsters in Boston history.

REVIEW: The flick opens with an overlay of narration and what appears to be a studying of faces; faces that have been distorted by makeup, contact lenses and the seventies/eighties hairstyles, which all seem to aim to remove any semblance of baggage of the stars’ and their previous roles. And as far as that objective goes, with Johnny Depp, they were entirely successful in immersing audiences into the likeness of Whitey Bulger’s form and appearance. Depp’s transformation was a makeup and performance work of art in its own right. It’s a performance piece that allows audiences to totally engulf themselves into the character without thinking of Depp himself. He [Depp] disappears into the character; lurking irremovably underneath those vampiric blue eyes while the appropriate creepiness of his actions is still a recognizable characteristic of Bulger himself. The rest of the ensemble cast of actors dons the unusual suspect typical mobster personas bringing to life, the essence of the true life crime story.

This however, is with the exception of talented actor Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game, 2014), whom, in my opinion totally destroyed every line he uttered in the Bostonian accent. What a shame, for such a talented actor. It was, literally, quite painful to sit through his scenes. Somehow he seemed to struggle with the basic intonations of the accent and just simply sounded like an idiot. Now, having said this, his acting was still on point, despite his epic fail with his lines.

Besides this, another obvious problem is that Bulger’s story is far too complex and meandering to be contained in a simple two-hour film, especially one that pays homage to most, if not all details of the true-life crime drama.

Nevertheless, the attention to detail is consistent and the recreations of a specific time period are very much convincing and are both skillfully executed visual tactics. This results in the story and its one hundred and twenty-two minute play-time, being boosted to some degree.

On many levels, Black Mass is an examination of a real-world monster, stuck to a true-to-life basis and condemned to a somewhat of an anticlimactic, unsurprising ending, due to the nature of the events that led up to the finality (If two life sentences can be considered a closure) of the story.

Overall, it should be said that stronger films have captured the essence of Whitey Bulger and one has to look no further than Martin Scorsese’s stylistic “The Departed;” staring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson, amongst the many others. However, for those interested, seeking out other perspectives on the legal facts of the story; Joe Berlinger’s 2014’s documentary, “Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger,” is a very detailed viewpoint to be observed. I believe three and a half out of five stars are well deserved here and it is worth the theater visit for the visual dramatics of it all.

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