150 Word Review: 'Black Mass' (2015)
Wicked so-so
Director Scott Cooper’s overly polished Black Mass is about Boston’s Irish mob. Typically, the gangster genre is about the Italian mafia, like The Godfather. There are also Irish-themed crime thrillers like Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed, or the underrated 1990 thriller State of Grace, starring Sean Penn.
The cast is impressive, even if the Bah-stun accents vary in quality: Joel Edgerton, Jesse Plemons, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon. But this is a good old-fashioned showcase for colorful ham Johnny Depp, whose fake blue eyes and slicked-back blond hair give him a cold-blooded, reptilian look, and he plays infamous crime boss ‘Whitey’ Bulger that way, too.
Depp’s acting style is simple. He hides behind layers of makeup, wigs, and other theatrical effects. Has there ever been, for any amount of time, a more overrated actor? All mobster movies are only as good as the murders, and there’s plenty of killing in Black Mass.