I view Black Mass as being someone highly interested in both gangster movie genre and true crime stories & criminal biographies themselves.
First of all, Black Mass is a movie about James 'Whitey' Bulger, who once led the notorious Boston -based Irish-American mob called Winter Hill Gang and also about the federal agent John Conolly who allowed Whitey into Witness Protection program and therefore, co-operated his crimes during Whitey's time under the government protection. Actually, these were two issues that Black Mass 'was suppose to' be about.
But what did we learn about Whitey after seeing Black Mass. About the depth of the character, about the changes the character underwent ? What did we see about what the character Whitey brought from his past to apply to present ? What about Whitey's human side ? Did we see anything about it after seeing Black Mass ?
Well my answer is a huge NO.
The only thing there was an over made-up Johnny Depp -with contact lenses that look faker than a frog with a lion mane around its neck- walking around and killing some people. The movie didn't tell so much about the rise of Whitey Bulger within the underworld. His daily-routine was absent. How did his crew operate was also a huge gap in the script that remained lacking. Even how had Whitey had some fun in his leisure time what he likes to eat or drink, which are very essential details to draw a consistent character, weren't told. The character created for Black Mass is a quite nonhuman, as a pure villain without any human aspect (or realistic side). Not even a natural face expression is used by Depp to give some feelings from the character.
Even real-life Whitey Bulger's mugshot doesn't seem so dull:
Johnny Depp's Whitey Bulger vs. Whitey Bulger's mugshot
The reason of this harsh criticism is because there are a lot to tell about Whitey: his early career as a street fighter; his party animal, outgoing, ladies' man personality; his self-development during his sentence with sports and books and his adaptation of this knowledge to his illegal operations; his intelligence for manipulating Patriarca Crime Family and even the Federal Bureau itself. But Black Mass only tells it only from the viewpoint of John Conolly which character doesn't base his support for Whitey upon nothing but words like 'family, loyalty etc.' The role that Whitey's own intelligence played was totally missed. A mistake that is too much for a movie that is a biography of the man himself.
What lacked of the script of Black Mass was insufficiency for the construction of a character. Call it a movie, a novel, a short story, anything, its character needs to face some hard challenges and overcome them with difficulties by using his/her skills, experiences, knowledge; by dealing with stress, by his/her street smarts or detective skills.
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| Tony (left), Toad (right) from Scarface (1983) |
For example: in Scarface (1983), Tony managed to deal with the situation after being trapped by Toad whom he met to deal drugs, by his own skills and the skills of his friends (the friends that Tony pulled together as a leader).
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| Sonny Black from Donnie Brasco (1997) |
Or in Donnie Brasco (1997), Sonny Black knew how to overcome after falling into disgrace when his Miami investment was ruined.
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| Kleinfeld (left) with Carlito (right) from Carlito's Way (1993) |
Carlitos Way (1993) is another example of the creation of a strong character after putting him/her into hard challenges, as when Carlito made his best to deal with the killing of Frank Taglialucci.
In short, firm gangster characters always deal with firm situations and what makes them firm is their ability to overcome those situations. Their looks, their voice or their mimics are not enough on their own to claim protagonist as tough guy.
Unfortunately, that's what I see in Black Mass, all it's Whitey has are unnatural psychopathy and villain stereotypes that look straight out of children's novels. Even worse, this happens when there are a lot to tell: Whitey's rise in Boston underworld, the way he organised Winter Hill, his survival in prison, his success in power struggles and his communication with his underlings. Black Mass has no example about Whitey's organisation skills or his mastership on arranging assassinations or setting schemes. Whitey's ways of maintaining the balance within the Boston crime world is another thing isn't told in the movie. Such things that shouldn't be disregarded when making a movie based on a personality as Bulger.
This video is a surveillance of real-life Whitey Bulger, is an example of how calm and cunning character he is, with some communication skills and charisma without the need of acting dangerous, scaring or hurting people non-stop, as Depp's character has shown. (I'm not saying he is an admirable character totally).
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| John Conolly (left) arresting an Italian-American mobster |
The similar shortcomings are valid for John Conolly part of Black Mass. His motivations of 'family', 'loyalty', 'friendship', or 'Don't forget where you come from' were processed pretty shallowly during the movie. Almost there weren't any solid story told about Conolly in the film. When telling a story of an FBI agent, telling a very little of his daily routine or his paper work is necessary I believe, to bring character some vitality. But in the film, this technical details were also highly ignored. What does an FBI agent do in his office or how do they prepare the reports of the co-operating government witnesses, how any information from an informer is processed, what might be the possible results accordingly, which offices are concerned about these ...
Of course this is just a movie so they don't have to tell the whole process as a documentary. But still, handling these details so superficially is something makes the script seem weak and disables the script to support the movie.
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| Stephen 'The Rifleman' Flemmi |
Knowing all those facts, it's not easy to agree
Flemmi of Black Mass, who only took orders
from Whitey and had no any speciality amongst Whitey's crew or had any distinctive
story in the movie. As one could easily think after seeing Black Mass that Flemmi was nothing but a fat errand-boy for Bulger, by contrast with the real character.
John Martorano is another character that the movie didn't give a damn about. The real-life Martorano is also another notorious and influential figure in the same environment with Bulger.
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| Pat Nee (left) with Bulger (right), who once fought against the faction Bulger belonged to, during the gang wars in South Boston |
And what do we see for the whole film is Whitey giving some people bad look, killing them without any solid reasons. Some very extensive events occurred in South Boston are told in couple of words and skipped.
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| A scene from Black Mass |
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| Similar sepia colouring used in Black Mass |
This is the most common aspect of the emerging period dramas, using sepia to strengthen the feeling of nostalgia. Of course this is an option and a matter of taste, there are no rights or wrongs in this case.
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| A photo from the set of Black Mass, showing how could the movie look like with real colours rather than sepia. |
The cult gangster movies on the other hand, are mostly in more realistic or live colours as seen below:
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| Goodfellas (1990) |
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| Heat (1995) |
But The Godfather on the other hand, uses a similar sepia colouring as Black Mass:
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| A scene from The Godfather: Part 2 (1974) |
Mentioning the classics, Black Mass has a lot of influenced scenes by them. For example the dinner scene when Bulger asks for the secret recipe and insist on when John Morris refuses to tell it, then Bulger's dreadful persistence turns out to be a mocking. A very similar gimmick to the one in Goodfellas, the famous 'Funny How' scene with Tommy (Joe Pesci) mocking Henry (Ray Liotta) in the same way.
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| 'Secret Recipe' scene from Black Mass |
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| 'Funny How' scene from Goodfellas |
Getting influenced by the classics and using the same gimmicks is something very natural for the filmmaking and Black Mass doesn't do anything different from the classics themselves, as Tommy (Joe Pesci) firing a revolver towards the camera in the end of Goodfellas refers to The Great Train Robbery (1903) (The video of the referencing is on the right).
But in my view, Black Mass fails taking from the classics usefully. This becomes the most obvious in the montage sequence when the director uses a fast-paced music with the sequence where Bulger and Conolly making good profits, a very similar type of sequence that used in De Palma or Scorsese movies. However, this fails to key up the audience because of the flatness of the characters' pre-stories in the film, which doesn't tell much about their personalities, thus failing to claim them 'real' for the film's own reality.
A montage sequence example from Casino (1996):
Because all Bulger does until this 'profiting montage sequence' is to walk around frightfully and threaten or beat up or kill someone. These actions are of mob life of course, but without telling the way a gangster profits, a film cannot achieve using these montage sequences. Remember, in Casino (1996), Nicky was even a more brutal character, yet the audience fully knew how he earned his money, by housebreakings, fencing jewellery and shaking down Casinos and protecting Mafia profits such as Ace and his casino Stardust. So when Nicky's montage sequence came with Can't You Hear Me Knocking of Rolling Stones, this brought excitement because we believed in Nicky, as I couldn't do for Whitey of Black Mass.
The only successful point that I see within Black Mass is the preciseness of the appearances of the characters. E.g.:
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| Flemmi in Black Mass |
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| The real-life Stephen Flemmi |
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| The real John Conolly (left) and the fictional one (right) |
But this lonely doesn't promise a good film. Donnie Brasco as being a real-life based film, has characters that doesn't look like much to their real-life counterparts, but that doesn't retain Donnie Brasco from being a good gangster movie.
The Departed (2006) is a loosely-based on story consists of the fictional Boston mob boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) which character is influenced by Whitey Bulger as Mr. French (Ray Winstone) was by Stephen Flemmi (Mr. French kills his wife in the same way Flemmi kills the young girl he had an affair). But obviously, The Departed is far more successful about invigorating its characters as Frank Costello, Mr. French, Fitzy or Delahunt way more than Black Mass does, and The Departed uses very small scenes with small details to do so. Which saves the movie's characters from being flat.
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| Fitzy (left) and Delahunt (right) from The Departed |
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| Frank Costello of The Departed |
And as a loosely based on film, The Departed tells more about being Southie than Black Mass does a
s being a direct real-life crime story. In addition, Frank Costello is a far more colourful and multidimensional character compared to Whitey Bulger of Black Mass.
At least we know Costello draws in his leisure time, likes listening John Lennon as he reveals etc.
Finally, I must say Black Mass belongs to the glut of the extremely promising movies with very good promotions and trailers, but lacking of character development and story depth. Of course this view totally belongs to me as a movie lover. I believe many other movie lovers could have different opinions about Black Mass. But if I wish to watch a good crime fiction, an episode of Sopranos, Fargo (series)or True Detective would give me more joy. And as for the budget issue, I found HBO's TV movie Gotti (1996) -which is obviously has a way lower budget- as a way more tasty crime movie rather than Black Mass.
Deniz Taylan Sağır
16.02.2016
