[Gangster Cinema] Johnny Depp's Whitey Bulger Biopic 'Black Mass'

Those scenes in the church he was straight up devil in human form -- his eyes were a trip.

 

Does this story go into his later years hiding out in plain sight In Santa Monica?

 

The dinner scene and how he got up to check on the wife...made me so uncomfortable

 

There were several scenes were he was as intense as Pesci in the 'you think i'm funny' -- the 'step-daughter' in the back of the car... I could go on -- good movie.

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To me, this movie is one of those acting vehicles to showcase an actor's talent. Lets let Johnny Depp show how good of an actor he is, but I felt the movie itself was very lacking. There was no real compelling storyline here and it was incredibly choppy and poorly put together. For instance, when the IRA comes to Whitey for an arms shipment, you see the guy shake hands with Whitey in the bar and next thing you know, they have a ship loaded with arms. They tell us that over the years Whitey becomes the crime lord of Boston, but they never show us the breadth of his operation. In the Winter Hill gang days, it's Whitey with 3 dudes. At the end, it's still Whitey with the same 3 dudes. Granted those are the ones that turned FBI witnesses on him, but we really never see much of anything else. I never got a sense of progression over the years, other than Whitey's increasing sense of paranoia, and the people that he personally killed. I thought Donnie Brasco was a much better story, and really showed how Donnie's crew progressed up the mafia chain and how he got in so deep.

I understand why some people like it, Depp's acting is incredible, he inhabits the character as he is often able to do, but I didn't find the story compelling and honestly even with the psycho violence, found the movie somewhat boring.

 

This is a great point and you're 100% right. It showed the "what" while leaving out a great deal of "why" and "how." More of a collection of set pieces, actors, and events without a showing the growth/change/progression.

That being said, the set pieces (including makeup) were spot on, the actors were great, and the events were entertaining. It's not an all time classic movie, where you want everything quiet, the lights dimmed, etc... more of a cable classic where if you stumble onto it flipping channels, it'll hold your attention.

 

^^ I agree the movie could of been better. Compared to The Departed which is loosely based on Bulger it lacked a lot.

But the acting Deep did was spot on.

 

I agree with you about the set pieces and even certain scenes were just riveting, like the step daughter scene. The acting is fantastic, but this is an example of where the whole was less than the sum of the individual pieces. Some of my favorites are Donnie Brasco, Goodfellas, and Casino. Those movies made me feel something at the end for the characters and what they went through(or in many cases how they died). I didn't get that from Black Mass in the end, though I understand if someone says they really liked it.

 

Whitey got his today.

 

Snitches get stitches beaten to death with a lock in a sock and their eyes gouged out and tongue cut off.

My favorite part of the story:

We’re told surveillance cameras captured the 4 inmates walking into Bulger’s cell and walking out with their clothes clearly bloodied. The attack was not caught on video. We’re told the killers went back to their cells, changed out of their bloody clothes and then walked back to Bulger’s cell with a mop and a bucket to clean up the mess.

 

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5bdaff87e4b01abe6a1bca89/amp?ncid=NEWSSTAND0001

Some crazy stuff.

 

And that’s that.