Boston, 1975. James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp), a small-time crook and leader of the Winter Hill Gang is sitting at the dinner table with his six-year-old son Douglas, dispensing life lessons on the merits of punching a fellow pupil in the face. “It’s not what you do,” says a poker-faced Bulger. “It’s where and when you do it. And who you do it to or with. You follow?” A nod of the head from Junior followed by a brief interjection from Her Indoors which he nips in the bud with a decisive: “If nobody sees you, it didn’t happen.”
Bulger went on to become kingpin of the criminal underworld and of the most wanted men in American history courtesy of a clandestine “association” with rogue FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) who granted him immunity from prosecution and round-the-clock protection on the grounds that he would “rat” on the head of the Italian mafia who ruled the roost in the north of the city,
Based on the New York Times bestseller and Ronseal-inspired non-fiction title “Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob” by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, director Scott Cooper and screenwriters Jez Butterworth and Mark Mallouk have crafted a dark and brooding film which although lacking in pace and tension charts the rise and fall of Bulger through a series of plea bargain confessions by his right-hand men Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi (Rory Cochrane), Johnny “The Executioner” Martorano (W. Earl Brown) and Kevin “Two Weeks” Weeks (Jesse Plemons) – the latter so-named because, according to American journalist Howie Carr, that’s “how long he stood up before he started spilling his ample guts to the feds when he was arrested in 1999.”
Johnny Depp is terrific as the menacing Bulger as is his make-up team headed by the Oscar-winning designer Joel Harlow who have drained his face of colour, pared back his dark locks to a receding grey and transformed his smouldering brown eyes into a steely blue. The body count is bloody and bountiful, but credit to Scott Cooper for focussing on the unfeeling faces of the assailants rather than glorifying in the gore – the strangulation of call girl Deborah Hussey (Juno Temple) is particularly chilling. And the cinematography and score by Masanobu Takayanagi and Junkie XL respectively infuse proceedings with a sinister undertone. Granted, it gets a bit samey towards the end. But if you don’t like it, well, in the words of Bulger: “You can get buried real quick!”
Verdict: 3/5
by Peter Callaghan
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