Black Mass (2015)

Director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) tries to wrangle an entire Wikipedia entry’s worth of facts in this too-thorough biopic of James “Whitey” Bulger, the south Boston hoodlum who became an organized crime kingpin in the mid-1970s until he went into hiding in 1995. Based on the book by former Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, the screenplay, adapted by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, justifiably implicates Bulger’s association with the FBI, instigated by childhood friend and agent John Connolly. Yet, Cooper insists on promoting a cult of personality for Bulger — portrayed by Johnny Depp in makeup that when it works makes his malevolence seem intense and otherworldly but when it doesn’t has him resembling the albino Whitey Jackson from the Chevy Chase comedy Foul Play — applying spurious psychological reasoning and literal turning points based on biographical events.
Read the full review at KCActive.com.