“Truth is stranger than fiction” is an idea to which I’ve never subscribed. I assume that those who believe it to be a truism simply haven’t read enough great stories in their lives. Case in point: Black Mass, which is based on a book about the real-life dealings of FBI Agent John Connolly with Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger.
Much of the trouble for director Scott Cooper’s adaptation is that Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning 2006 film The Departed fictionalized several of the key elements of the Bulger story, kicking up the double-crossing several notches. By comparison Black Mass is flat and lifeless.
Johnny Depp delivers another top-notch performance as Bulger, who agrees to become an FBI informant in order to get the government’s help in taking out his competitors in South Boston’s crime rackets. Connolly (Joel Edgerton) grew up in the same neighborhood as Bulger and his brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch), a powerful state senator, and it’s hard to understand how the bureau could have allowed an agent so openly admiring and protective of Bulger to have been his handler. The broad strokes with which the film paints a relationship that played out over 20 years — several times others within the FBI become suspicious of Connolly’s work and yet those concerns are quickly shunted aside — do little to deliver a satisfactory explanation.
A bigger problem is that, as a character, Connolly is overmatched (as he was perhaps in real life) by the crooks. The movie is far more interested in dwelling upon the criminal mayhem and horrific acts of Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang. So when we return to a B-story like the effect of Connolly’s work on his marriage, it’s hard to care much what happens to him. Without a hero or even an antihero, there’s nothing to root for, and the slow unwinding of the plot plays as perfunctory and inevitable.
