Black Mass (***)

There's a piece of trivia floating around that Johnny Depp believes "Black Mass" to be his favorite movie of those that he has starred in. There's also a bit of trivia that says Johnny Depp doesn't typically watch many of his own movies. This makes sense, I suppose, as "Mass" is far from spectacular and Depp has clearly worked on better pieces of cinema. There's nothing terribly wrong with "Black Mass," but as a work contributing to the organized crime genre, it has little more to chip in.

The story is of James "Whitey" Bulger (Depp), the criminal, and John Connolly (the FBI agent). We witness the rise and fall of Whitey through the eyes of his accomplices. The movie opens with a close up of one of Whitey's goons giving his testimony to the FBI. We assume the movie will follow the story according to his point of view (in the same manner of "Goodfellas," perhaps). Not so. Instead, we weave in and out of the whole gang and on both sides of the law. With each new character, we realize that the film is quite an ensemble cast, and by the end, I wasn't sure quite who the story was about at all.

We all are familiar with the crime genre in movies. Goodfellas, The Godfather, and practically anything done by Martin Scorsese. "Black Mass" is perhaps most closely related to "The Departed" in its relation to Boston, the hot pursuit of the law, and the gray area in between crime and justice. Yes, Whitey is a terrible man, but he has his redeeming features, just as Connolly (who takes Whitey in as an informant) seems to fight for justice but is also tempted by the ideals of the criminal underworld.

The film is well-photographed and aptly made, but how much more can we learn about crime that already hasn't been told in a more artful way? Not much, apparently, as Scott Cooper (the director known most for "Crazy Heart") pays homage to better made films and contributes not much more to the pot.

Johnny Depp drew a lot of early praise for his performance, and the trailer promised this to be a potentially Oscar-winning role. It's true, Depp carries few if any of his typical acting traits, and he is nearly unrecognizable throughout the film. His voice is velvety and yet dangerous, like a dog that growls after feeling threatened. His eyes are focused. It's quite a good performance, indeed, and while he rarely has an opportunity to sink his teeth into any juicy scenes, Depp succeeds in being the only person in the extremely large cast that stuck in my mind once the film ended.

And speaking of the ending, it's a sloppy and unfortunate way to end, indeed. We get a traditional post-credits story of what happened to each character, jail time and such. And then we see the capture of Whitey several years later (spoiler alert). In a film that is slow-paced and perhaps more focused on setting the tone than setting up a traditional narrative, the ending left me feeling like the filmmakers didn't quite know how to wrap up the story they started. If they were drawing such parallels with the work of Scorsese, why not end with a bang? Just a suggestion.

(Awards potential: Best Actor (Depp), Best Original Score)

*I refuse to believe this film will be nominated for Best Makeup, even though I wouldn't be surprised if it was. The blue contact lenses worn by Depp throughout the film were quite jarring, and only now did I realize that the pupils on such lenses are set. That is to say, in a dark room in the middle of the night, Depp's pupils were as tiny as they would be on a sunny day, and for the entirely of the film, all I could think of was that the makeup artists should have used varying lenses throughout the film to better convey a simple concept like lighting.