I'm not sure what it is about gangster films, but it's really hard for me to get into them even though I recognize that they are good. Take the Godfather, everybody loves, praises it, and says it's one of the most perfect movies out there, maybe I have to rewatch it, but I didn't think the same. Same with Goodfellas, I was glad I watched those films, but I never felt connected enough for the movie to suck me in. I felt like I was watching a movie and therefore didn't have much enjoyment as everyone else. The same can be said to Black Mass, for me personally.
Johnny Depp plays one of the most notorious gangsters, James "Jimmy" "Whitey" Bulger, who grew up in Boston and teamed up with the FBI and played them so that he could grow his empire. For years Johnny Depp has played the crazy, kooky, weirdo such as Jack Sparrow, The Mad Hatter, Mordecai, and many other performances that people would say are just the same thing. You can not deny; however, that Johnny Depp not only gave a really great performance, but a performance so good I think it might be one of his best. He's subtle, and when he wants you to feel fear you do. Take the scene where he's discussing his son's situation to his wife. He starts out as a worried father, but once his wife says something that he didn't agree with you could see it in his face that he instantly changed from worried father to a predator that would demolish anything that would get in his way.
Depp wasn't the only one who had a great performance, everybody in the film did, and boy are there a lot of big named actors. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Depp's brother and once again he amazes me at how well he can change. I didn't notice a hint of British in his speech and I truely believed they were brothers. Joel Edgerton plays the FBI friend, and I honestly didn't even recognize him until more than half way through the film. Everybody gave a solid performance and you were either laughing at the few jokes they put into the film, or fearing for your life, because this movie is very serious and they don't hold back on showing you that these guys are the bad guys and you should fear them.
While this film is great in all aspects to film lovers, there are two things that really bugged me. The first thing is that the film chose to talk about what Jimmy did rather than show. I'm not sure if it's because Jimmy tried not to tie incidents back to him, but a lot of the really terrible, horrible things that Jimmy did are usually put into conversation between the FBI when debating if he really is a good informant. Because of this I didn't feel like I got a good understanding on what exactly Jimmy did. Then, the film jumps through time a bit, and I understand that they did that because there was just too much history to put into the film, but every time I was finally getting sucked into the story the film would jump a few years or a decade later and I felt that by doing that it just ripped me back out of the story. I'm not sure if I just missed it, but Jimmy gets into an argument with his wife at some point and then the film does a time jump. She is never seen or talked about for the rest of the film and I have no idea what happened. Did he kill her? Did they just separate? Did she run away? I don't know, and I just felt like I was getting glimpses at a bigger story from this film because of the time jumping.
Overall, I recognize that this is a really great film, especially that this will put Johnny Depp back on top, but I didn't enjoy as much as everyone else, because the time jumps made me feel like I was getting the cliff notes version of this story, and I wanted to see the bad side of Jimmy, well the worst side I guess, instead of hearing it from an FBI squabble. If you enjoy gangster movies like Goodfellas and The Godfather, then I'd say that you'd like this film a whole lot more than I did, and I do think this film will explode with popularity because my theater was nearly sold out.
Rating:
Burn in Hell, Bad, Okay, Good, Must Watch
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