Bedeviled

Black Mass, in which a cadaverous Johnny Depp portrays James “Whitey” Bulger, the famous Boston gangster and FBI informant, is the kind of movie that gives competence a bad name. It is a very well-made film: handsome, never boring, with strong performances in almost all the major parts. Yet it’s also deeply disappointing, a film that hits its marks but never figures out exactly what it wants us to care about, or why it exists as a story at all.

Which is unfortunate, because the real-life Bulger story is strange, fascinating, and an easy elevator pitch: An Irish-American hoodlum from Southie with a successful politician brother gets recruited by the feds, uses their protection to rub out his rivals and consolidate his power, and then, when the net tightens, goes on the lam for 16 years before he’s caught.