REVIEW: “Black Mass”

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

BY LINDSEY MCGINNIS

“Black Mass,” the biographical crime drama based off Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill’s book of the same name, paints an appropriately unforgiving portrait of one of Boston’s most notorious mobsters. Framed as a flashback, the film tackles the period between James “Whitey” Bulger’s criminal reestablishment in the mid ’70s and his flight from Boston in 1994. While the rise of Bulger (Johnny Depp) and the Winter Hill Gang is the film’s primary focus, the FBI’s missteps and the manipulation of State politics are also woven into the story.

This is not an adrenaline-pumping remake of “The Departed,” as director Scott Cooper (“Crazy Heart” 2009 and “Out of the Furnace” 2013) relies on stillness and silence to portray Bulger’s slow creep to power. “Black Mass” has no distinct climax; its steady pacing is perforated by moments of increasingly intense violence instead.

Unlike flamboyant period films like “American Hustle,” “Black Mass” subtly delivers the historic eye candy that makes retrospective films fun to watch. Old-fashioned cars line South Boston parking lots and extras wear bright green period outfits to recreate the St. Patrick’s Day parade. The excessive homophobic language felt as appropriate in the hyper-masculine 1970s FBI offices as the vintage Budweiser cans looked on the Bulger’s kitchen table.

The acting was mostly solid and the accents mostly inoffensive. As Cooper explained in a Boston Globe interview, he had high expectations for Depp’s performance as Whitey Bulger. “This is a man who doesn’t blink much,” he told Depp, “because that shows weakness. He’s always in control. This is a man who, when he comes into a room, he disturbs the molecules in ways that are frightening and unnerving.” Fortunately, the three-time Oscar nominee delivered. Unlike in his usual over-the-top, Tim Burton-esque roles, Depp gives a hauntingly understated performance as Bulger.

Joel Edgerton is also fantastic as John Connolly, the Southie native who abuses his position as an FBI agent to protect the Bulger family. He nails Connolly’s dangerous fixation with Whitey Bulger, whom he comes to view as an older brother.

The exception to the other stunning performances is Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Whitey’s actual younger brother, State Senator Billy Bulger. Cumberbatch’s Boston accent sounds labored and nasally and his strained facial expressions highlight Billy Bulger’s spineless nature, but left me wondering how he ever got elected. Cumberbatch’s performance is a distractingly low point in an otherwise solid film. Thankfully, his screen time is relatively minimal.

While Depp, Edgerton and Cumberbatch serve as the story’s core pillars, the well-selected ensemble cast bolsters the complex story. Though he may distract some “Parks and Recreation” fans, Adam Scott does a fine job portraying the ineffective FBI agent Robert Fitzpatrick, and David Habour is excellent as John Morris, the well-meaning agent who assists Connolly despite his better judgement. Bulger’s partners Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons) and Steve “The Rifleman” Flemmi (Rory Cochrane) are as vital a part of the Winter Hill Gang’s portrayal as Whitey himself.

As with many historical dramas, the trouble ultimately lies in the loose ends, in choosing which parts of the story to cut and which to let flourish. Allusions to the subtleties of Whitey’s story left me wanting more.  Race relations get virtually no screen time, though the movie coincides with Boston busing and desegregation in the latter half of the film, the Irish Republican Army makes a guest appearance only to retreat right back to Ireland.

These straggling subplots are partially a product of the restricted time, but “Black Mass” also has an overarching issue of female character abandonment. In his Boston Globe interview, Cooper states that Marianne Connolly (Julianne Nicholson), the cautious wife of Agent Connolly, serves as the “moral compass of the film,” yet she only appears in a few scenes, and rarely outside of the Connolly’s house.

Still, Marianne fares better in this cinematic retelling than any of Whitey’s “molls.” His girlfriend Lindsey Cyr (Dakota Johnson) disappears early in the film after their only son succumbs to Reye’s Syndrome. Aside from a graphic scene in which Whitey calmly strangles a teenage prostitute to death and the somber funeral for the Bulgers’ beloved mother, there are no other scenes prominently featuring female characters. Add that to the fact that Cooper completely cut the role of Catherine Grieg (Sienna Miller), Whitey’s late partner, and I wonder if these lost stories are really a matter of restricted time, or if there is simply not space for women in American gangster films?