Somewhat surprisingly the most interesting part about seeing
the new Johnny Depp movie Black Mass happened
to take part at the concession stand rather than the theater. First, my friend’s AMC club card (or Stubs card, as it’s properly called) brought the entire business
to a grinding halt to where the manager had to be called in to hack into the
cash register like it held missile codes from the pentagon. After said hacking
was completed, the dejected cashier informed my friend he had no reward dollars
accrued—despite the fact that the previous employee at the box office had
informed us completely otherwise. As the situation continued to develop (and as
every single other patron made their
way to their respective theater—really, we were the last ones standing, this
went on for almost 15 minutes), a woman popped up behind us suddenly very
alarmed and concerned, asking, “wait, there are people with black masks in the
theater?” Us: “Nooo, Black MASS.” Her: “Ohhhh, I was going to say.” Anyways,
after my friend has made sure that he has at the very least tallied our entire
purchase for further (missing?) rewards, we are about to head back to see the
movie until the staff informs us that our hotdogs will need another twenty
minutes. At this point, my friend starts clapping like a jackass and begins
making demands for free food delivered to our seats in the theater. The staff
relents. I then tell the staff that I will be happy to come out and get the
hotdogs when they’re ready, so long as the hotdogs don’t get fucked with. We
return to our theater and not surprisingly, Black
Mass has already begun.
Now, if you haven’t caught on, this was really all a long
winded way of saying that Black
Mass isn’t a good movie. It just isn’t. Sorry for the spilled milk. For a
movie with countless scenes of people getting their brains blown out, the movie
is plain boring. The first three quarters of the movie consist of an
overarching cat and mouse game with rival Boston gangs, FBI players, etc. etc
but there’s one big problem: you never give a shit. It’s just random people
getting killed over and over. The supporting cast all look great, but the audience is never really given an opportunity
to identify with any of them. The best performance of the lot comes from Peter
Sarsgaard as Brian Halloran, but once again, he ends up being just one more
dude getting mowed down by Johnny Depp.
As for Johnny Depp, I thought his chops were up to snuff in
the film, but unfortunately there was another huge and glaring problem. I could
never get this one screaming thought out of my head literally the entire way
throughout the film “He looks like a fucking LIZARD. WHY??? Why does his skin
tone look like took an acid bath with the rest of the mutants from X-Men??” I
kid you not—every single scene with Depp as Bulger, I found myself contrasting
and comparing his luminescence to everyone else in the scene. There was never
any common ground. Johnny Depp looked like he was either copy and pasted into
the movie or auditioning for The Mask 2—except this time, instead of being a
purveyor of justice, he’s a guy who creepily slides his hands all over your
wife, covertly threatens you with murder over dinner table conversation, or
otherwise kills and tortures anything that moves.
The icing on the cake? The story is DEPRESSING.
More spoilers: Bulger escapes for ten years scot-free while
everyone else inherits the massive shit storm in his wake, including his good
guy pal FBI buddy, John “how dumb am I?” Connolly.
**
Here. If you want to see a good movie where a bunch of
people die, go see Sicario instead.