Review roundup: Critics hail 'Black Mass' as Johnny Depp's comeback

There comes a time when a movie reinvents the actor, swinging them back into the spotlight and saving them from a downward slide, making them frontrunners in the Oscar race.

Looking at the rave reviews of Johnny Depp's portrayal of Whitey Bulger in Black Mass, one is tempted to think of this movie as a comeback for the actor who once had us eating off his palm with brilliant movies like What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, well before he gave us a doozy like Lone Ranger!

Black Mass is the true story of Boston's notorious gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger. Brother of Senator Billy Bulger played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Whitey agrees to work with FBI agent John Connolly played by Joel Edgerton as a FBI informant on Boston mafia. But in reality he is only clearing the turf for his benefits.

Dakota Johnson, Kavin Bacon, Peter Skarsgaard, Julianne Nicholson are the other lead actors in this film directed by Scott Cooper.

Many are touting the brilliant acting by Depp and Edgerton as tough competition for other Oscar hopefuls.

Let's look at what critics have to say.

Indiewire

"Cooper's take on the gangster picture is so deeply beholden to great films that have gone before that you might find yourself mentally "correcting" it like a term paper, as though Black Mass were an exam to see how closely he has studied the greats. To be fair, it passes the test with flying colours — Cooper has revised hard, and at times skates so close to the kind of dizzy dark pleasure that Martin Scorsese's gangster movies exude that it almost gets there. That "almost," however might be the film's biggest problem." Read more

The Guardian

Black Mass review - compelling true crime drama is mighty comeback for Johnny Depp

"Scott Cooper’s Black Mass is a big, brash, horribly watchable gangster picture taken from an extraordinary true story and conceived on familiar generic lines. Johnny Depp’s south Boston wiseguy James “Whitey” Bulger, with his shaven bald head and weird blue eyes is a fully accredited sociopath with a groany deep voice like Ray Liotta in GoodFellas. He even has a “Funny, how?” moment like Joe Pesci from the same film: kidding around and persuading his corrupt FBI associate over dinner into divulging the secret family recipe for his steak dish – then turning very nasty about how easily his dining companion can be induced to spill the beans, and then uproariously pretending to have been kidding once everyone around the table has turned white with shock." Read more

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Variety

Johnny Depp does career-best work as notorious Boston gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger in Scott Cooper's taut, elegantly understated crime drama.

"Johnny Depp’s mesmerising performance — a bracing return to form for the star after a series of critical and commercial misfires — is the chief selling point of Black Mass, there is much else to recommend this sober, sprawling, deeply engrossing evocation of Bulger’s South Boston fiefdom and his complex relationship with the FBI agent John Connolly, played with equally impressive skill by Joel Edgerton. Something of an anti-The Departed (which was partly inspired by the Bulger case), the movie has an intentionally muted, ’70s-style look and feel that may limit its appeal to the date-night multiplex crowd, but quality-starved adult moviegoers should flock to one of the fall’s first serious, awards-caliber attractions." Read more

The Hollywood Reporter

"Long-time Depp fans who might have lately given up hope of his doing something interesting anytime soon will especially appreciate his dive into the deep end here to personify genuine perfidy in the guise of legendary hoodlum James "Whitey" Bulger, the crime kingpin of South Boston from the 1970s until 1994, when he was forced to go on the lam for what ended up being 16 years. For a dozen of them he was second only to Osama Bin Laden on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list." Read more

The Wrap

Black Mass Venice Review: Johnny Depp Returns to Actual Acting in Gripping True-Crime Tale 

"Ultimately, this is Depp’s show all the way, featuring his best dramatic performance since another organised-crime movie, 1997’s Donnie Brasco. If this is the milieu we need to keep him this focused as a thespian, then get out those pinky rings, Hollywood, and make Depp more offers he can’t refuse." Read more

The New York Times 

Black Mass Resurrects Boston’s Long Memories of Whitey Bulger

"Whitey Bulger, the Boston crime boss who is the subject of Black Mass, Scott Cooper’s new movie starring Johnny Depp and opening on Sept. 18, is probably the most mythologised gangster since Al Capone. Mr. Cooper, who took over the project from Barry Levinson, said recently that he had been fascinated by the Whitey story for years, and that in 2011, when Mr. Bulger was discovered hiding in Santa Monica, Calif., of all places, it seemed like a filmmaker’s godsend. “I was gobsmacked,” he said. “And to think he had been living just miles from my house.” Read more