James
“Whitey” Bulger spent about 15 years on the lam as #2 on the FBI’s Most Wanted
list, and yet “
Black Mass,” the new Warner Bros. drama documenting his reign of
terror over Irish Catholic South Boston, directed by
Scott Cooper and headlined by
Johnny Depp
as Bulger, indicates he still eludes us. Guided by witnesses’ recorded
testimonies, “Black Mass” is like an old chronological scrapbook from
1975 to
the late 1980s reorganized for bureaucratic eyes. Yet as Cooper
emphasizes objectivity, Johnny Depp’s Bulger is an unnerving
anomaly—a hybrid of Nosferatu, Pazuzu and Gollum
DNA, a horror movie presence contaminating an Irish Catholic period
canvas. That a character should be reading “The
Exorcist” when Depp’s Bulgerferatu knocks on the door is less period
correctness than an allusion to the character’s satanic prowess. In such
a thin film, Bulger evades perspective. “Black Mass” cannot make sense
of
Bulger. Even when he's taken away in handcuffs, he still isn’t “there."
It’s as if he needed to be
a cosmeticized special effect because Cooper finds his evil
unfathomable.
Read the rest at RogerEbert.com: http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/of-rats-and-men-black-mass-vs-the-departed
Order your copy of Off the Map: Freedom, Control, and the Future in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, published by Cascade Books, here.
