Black Mass review – big, brash and horribly watchable

Since its premiere at Venice earlier this year, Black Mass has been labelled Johnny Depp’s “comeback” picture, although I’m not so sure he ever went quite as far away as everyone thinks. A career as prolific as his is bound to have some dry spells. At any rate, Depp carries this big, brash and horribly watchable true-life crime drama, written by Jez Butterworth and Mark Mallouk and directed by Scott Cooper, and the movie has valid insights into the political roots of gangsterism.

Depp plays south Boston wiseguy James “Whitey” Bulger, whose heyday was the 70s and 80s. With his bald head and weird blue eyes, Depp’s Bulger is a fully paidup sociopath with a groany-deep voice like Ray Liotta in GoodFellas. His brother, Massachusetts State Senator Billy Bulger, is played with a cat-that-got-the-cream smirk by Benedict Cumberbatch: Billy effectively manages what only be described as the political wing of Whitey’s organisation.

The Bulger boys grew up in the same Irish-American community as ambitious FBI agent John Connolly, played by Joel Edgerton, who gives Whitey virtual immunity from prosecution, in return for supposedly valuable “intel” on the Italian mafiosi in the North. Bulger’s mob fiefdom is simply down to this shabby deal, and not to any supposed Napoleonic charisma. Depp, Cumberbatch and Edgerton give richly absorbing performances of preening macho self-regard and self-delusion – this is a shrewd study of the way gangsters are symptoms of corruption, acted with confidence and verve.