Black Mass

Black Mass (15)

USA 2015 123 mins  Dir: Scott Cooper  Starring: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Dakota Johnson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Juno Temple, Corey Stoll

Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper sups deep from the well of Scorsese for this true-life gangster drama, right down to his use of period Rolling Stones music on the soundtrack. His subject James ‘Whitey’ Bulger was even played, in lightly disguised form, by Jack Nicholson in Scorsese’s The Departed. Add a traditional gangster movie rise and fall story arc and we’re in very familiar territory, albeit enlivened by terrific performances from Joel Edgerton and a prosthetically uglified Johnny Depp. Shame Benedict Cumberbatch is called upon to do little more than turn on the sinister smarm and show off his American accent.

James ‘Whitey’ Bulger (Depp) leads the Winter Hill Gang, which controls all the rackets in mid-1970s South Boston. In the great scheme of things, he’s pretty small time. Until, that is, FBI agent John Connolly (Edgerton) returns to Boston with a mandate to nail the Mafia-connected Angiulo brothers, who operate in the north of the city. The Feds have hit a wall because they’re unable to gather any intelligence on the Angiulos. So Connolly persuades his superiors to allow him to recruit childhood pal Whitey as an informant, in return for immunity from prosecution. Whitey is adamant he ain’t no rat. But when the Angiulos start flexing their muscle on the street, he’s quick to see the advantages of such an arrangement: “We get the FBI to fight our wars against our enemies and they protect us while we do whatever the fuck we want to.” It helps, of course, that his brother Billy is a powerful Massachusetts state senator. You don’t need a crystal ball to see Whitey spiralling out of control and old chum Connolly corrupted by the criminal underworld.

If you can get over his stick-on nose, rotten teeth and receding hairline, Depp delivers a suitably chilling performance as the ruthless, amoral, dead-eyed Bulger, who’s not above carrying out his own whackings after being further hardened by a brace of family tragedies. Edgerton is equally impressive in the less flashy role of Connolly, whose cockiness and confidence start to evaporate as his lies and cover-ups unravel. It’s a shame the film doesn’t make more of the fascinating relationship between divergent siblings Whitey and Billy, which leaves Cumberbatch offscreen for long stretches. But there are plenty of memorable supporting performances by way of compensation. Dakota Johnson makes the most of her small role as the mother of Bulger’s child, as does Juno Temple as a doomed prostitute, and Corey Stoll as the indefatigable prosecutor determined to bring Whitey to justice. Anyone playing gangster movie bingo will also be delighted to find that the brothers’ card cheat mom (Mary Klug) is a character that goes right back to Ma Jarrett in White Heat.