Black Mass (2015) [Blu-ray]
Biography | Crime | Drama

Tagline: Keep your enemies close.

John Connolly and James "Whitey" Bulger grew up together on the streets of South Boston. Decades later, in the late 1970s, they would meet again. By then, Connolly was a major figure in the FBI's Boston office and Whitey had become godfather of the Irish Mob. What happened between them - a dirty deal to trade secrets and take down Boston's Italian Mafia in the process - would spiral out of control, leading to murders, drug dealing, racketeering indictments, and, ultimately, to Bulger making the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List.

Storyline: John Connolly and James "Whitey" Bulger grew up together on the streets of South Boston. Decades later, in the late 1970s, they would meet again. By then, Connolly was a major figure in the FBI's Boston office and Whitey had become godfather of the Irish Mob. What happened between them - a dirty deal to trade secrets and take down Boston's Italian Mafia in the process - would spiral out of control, leading to murders, drug dealing, racketeering indictments, and, ultimately, to Bulger making the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. Written by E Anderson and J. Breaux

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Michael Reuben, February 15, 2016 -- James "Whitey" Bulger (known to his family and cohorts as "Jimmy") is one of the most notorious gangsters in American history. For over two decades, Bulger dominated Boston's underworld, raking in millions from drugs, extortion, gambling and any other business that took his fancy. Anyone in Bulger's way was either beaten into submission or, more often, disappeared forever. Local law enforcement was powerless to stop him, because Bulger, in an ingenious scam, had corrupted the FBI into wrapping him in its protection. Bulger now claims that he simply paid federal agents to look the other way, but the truth is more disturbing. Beginning in 1974, Bulger registered as a federal informant, supposedly cooperating with the Bureau to bring down the Mafia. In exchange, he was effectively granted immunity for his own criminal activities. Every effort to investigate him was cut short, redirected or sabotaged. To this day, the FBI's relationship with Bulger remains a stain on the Bureau's reputation.

Bulger has already been the subject of film and TV documentaries, including the recent Whitey: United States V. James. J. Bulger, as well as numerous books, including Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob, which was written by the two Boston Globe reporters who first revealed Bulger's deal with the government. Aspects of his biography have been incorporated into fictional characters like Jack Nicholson's mob boss in The Departed and Jason Isaacs "bad" brother in Showtime's Brotherhood. When Black Mass was first announced, it promised a gripping portrayal of the actual criminal mastermind, to be played by the chameleon-like Johnny Depp, who specializes in bringing extreme characters to life.

Unfortunately, Black Mass is a dud, a two-hour catalog of missed opportunities and poor filmmaking choices by director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart ), who succeeded to the director's chair after several more experienced hands left the project. Cooper substantially rewrote the script by Jez Butterworth and Mark Mallouk (who remain credited as writers), and he has said that he wanted to "humanize" Bulger by exploring lesser known aspects of his life. In the process, though, he failed to provide an effective account of the criminal career that makes Bulger worthy of attention in the first place. Trying to tell multiple stories at once, Cooper tells none of them well.

(Note: If one believes that it is possible to "spoil" matters of historical record that have been widely reported, then the following review could be said to contain "spoilers".)

Black Mass picks up Bulger (Depp) in 1975, when he has already served a nine-year prison term (part of it in Alcatraz) and returned to South Boston to assume control of the Winter Hill Gang. We watch him recruit Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons), the last of the trio of close associates and confidantes who would later give evidence against him. The other two are Kevin Martarano (Deadwood's W. Earl Brown) and Stephen Flemmi (Rory Cochrane). Cooper stages several from the long list of notorious crimes in Bulger's career: the murder of businessman Roger Wheeler (David De Beck) at his Tulsa country club, so that Bulger can acquire ownership of World Jai-alai; the casual execution of Deborah Hussey (Juno Temple), an occasional girlfriend of Flemmi who may know too much and talks too easily; and the parking lot shooting of Brian Halloran (Peter Saarsgard), a drug dealer who approaches the FBI with information about Bulger and is almost certainly betrayed by the Bureau. Halloran's friend, Michael Donahue (Patrick M. Walsh), a construction worker with no criminal ties except that he knew Halloran, is also killed because he happens to be giving Halloran a ride home.

While all this is happening, Bulger's childhood friend, John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), now an FBI agent, keeps insisting to his skeptical superior (Kevin Bacon) that "Jimmy" is just a small-timer. In the film's portrayal, it is Connolly who takes the lead in recruiting his old pal as an informant and who then looks the other way so assiduously that his self-deception borders on comical. An ambitious climber who sees Bulger as his ticket to career advancement, Connolly finds that, having vouched for his old friend, he is stuck with cleaning up after him. Black Mass also suggests that Connolly was seduced by the flash and swagger of the criminal lifestyle—a point made forcefully by his wife, Marianne (Julianne Nicholson), who, as an outsider, can see clearly past the ties of the old neighborhood. Unlike Connolly's colleague, John Morris (David Harbour), who eventually blows Bulger's cover by tipping off the Globe about his FBI connection, Connolly remains loyal to "Jimmy" to the end. (The real Connolly is currently serving a lengthy prison term.)

As if all this weren't enough ground to cover, Cooper devotes substantial screen time to Bulger's personal life, showing him playing gin with his aging mother (Mary Klug); trying to act as a father to his illegitimate son (Luke Ryan); overcome with grief when tragedy befalls the boy; and remaining close to his brother, Bobby (Benedict Cumberbatch), a state senator and eventually president of the University of Massachusetts (a position he was forced to resign because of his ties to Whitey). These scenes presumably reflect Cooper's effort to "humanize" Bulger, and the writer/director has even gone so far as to suggest that Bulger's grief over the loss of his son and mother in quick succession may have contributed to the brutality of his crimes. It's a nonsensical theory, since Bulger was a vicious hoodlum long before he suffered personal loss. People cope with bereavement every day, and the vast majority don't become career criminals.

Cooper seems to have been guided by a concern that, as one of his producers says in the extras, there is no "hero" in Whitey Bulger's story. But that is the very nature of gangster films, which are routinely peopled by characters who commit evil deeds and are almost always punished for it in one way or another. The storyteller's job is to cultivate sympathy for the devil, but you can't do it by mixing in a few good deeds with the bad ones. The trick is to make the audience a fan of the bad guy, so that they become complicit in his activities, co-conspirators silently hoping he'll prevail. Think of the Corleone Family in The Godfather; or Henry Hill in Goodfellas; or Ace Rothstein in Casino. They're all bad people, but that doesn't prevent viewers from identifying with their point of view.

Of course, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese knew enough to do the one thing that Cooper skips over, which is to depict their protagonist's criminal enterprises in a clear and comprehensible way. Henry Hill's narration takes us on a guided tour of New York's wise guy scene, and Casino provides a meticulous account of how Las Vegas makes money. The opening of The Godfather is a master class in conveying crucial information effectively and memorably, using nothing more than conversations at a wedding to trace the anatomy of a vast criminal organization. Black Mass has nothing equivalent, because Cooper makes no serious effort to explain what kind of operation Bulger oversaw or how it worked. It's as if the director expects the audience to supply that knowledge themselves, perhaps gleaned from other gangster films. Devoid of context, Bulger's crimes seem like nothing more than impulsive acts, less the machinations of a mastermind than the self-destructive eruptions characteristic of Joe Pesci's Tommy in Goodfellas. Indeed, one of Depp's most memorable scenes seems intentionally designed to echo Pesci's famous "What's so funny about me?" intimidation, and the whole of Black Mass leaves the impression of Bulger as Tommy's Irish equivalent, with piercing blue eyes. Cooper is so busy trying to "humanize" the thug that he loses sight of the master strategist. That character slips quietly away, much as Bulger himself slipped away in 1994 just ahead of an indictment.

An indirect but quietly devastating critique of Black Mass appears in the Blu-ray extras, in the form of an hour-long documentary on the pursuit of Bulger after he fled Boston. The documentary consists of nothing more than interviews, surveillance video and archival photos, but it details the extraordinary care with which Bulger pre-planned his escape and explains how he was able to remain undetected for sixteen years. The documentary is everything that Black Mass should have been and isn't. It demonstrates that you don't need a star turn by a noted actor to tell a gripping yarn. You just need to get the story right.

Johnny Depp's performance in Black Mass is fitfully engaging (though some have disputed its accuracy), but the film itself is inert. Storytelling is all about choices—what point of view to take, which events to include and what to leave out. Black Mass is an object lesson in bad dramatic choices. Not recommended for the film itself, but the disc is worth acquiring for the documentary about the hunt for Whitey.

[CSW] -2.8- This is supposed to be the tale of Whitey Bulger, "Crime Boss," but do we ever see him being a "Crime Boss?" Most of the movie has Johnny Depp walking around with his buddies, wearing the same outfit, smoking, drinking beer, & killing someone about every 20 minutes. We also do not really see him giving the information to the FBI that was supposed to have helped his criminal career. As a matter of fact they don't portray him as much more than a thug/killer. Depp is a good choice for the creepy role, but his appearance never changes despite the passage of several decades - & the repetitiveness of the story gets rather boring. Glad I saw it, but I could never sit through this movie again.
[V4.5-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box codes were available at the time of this rental but they are available now.


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