Gangster

Black Mass Review

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Black Mass has been a long time coming. First teased at the beginning of 2015, the film has had small leaks now and then of certain actors and characters until it was released this week, amid a buzz of differing views and reviews. Does it live up to early rumours that it’s an Awards contender?

Black Mass stars Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnson, Adam Scott and Kevin Bacon and is directed by Scott Cooper. The film follows gangster James “Whitey” Bulger (Depp) as he turns informant to FBI Agent John Connolly (Edgerton) in an attempt to bring down the Italian mafia.

First off, Johnny Depp’s performance is amazing. After several weak, boring and sometimes offensive roles, it’s great to see him back in a role that shows off his acting ability. Deep is covered in makeup and has contact lenses to turn his eyes a sickly grey colour, it all adding up to make him look like dark and menacing leech on society. Throughout the film we see a man who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty when faced with “rats” and snitches, leading to some truly blood-soaked beatings and a great deviation from his Disney characters.

Unfortunately, while everyone else does a good job with their respective roles, they all have these ridiculous Boston accents, destroying any sense whenever they speak that this was meant to be a serious drama. Adam Scott and Dakota Johnson are woefully underused, and halfway through the film stops being about Bulger and instead turns to his FBI counterpart Connelly, played by Joel Edgerton, who compared to Depp is nowhere near as interesting a character or as charismatic. Whenever the film kept focussing on his life, the story fell apart for me since I really wasn’t bothered what happened to him. I know the film was trying to set up a “Fallen Man” archetype with Connelly, but none of it ever worked.

Reading several reviews, many people have been quick to compare it to Goodfellas. I can see the resemblance, both stories are long sagas about growing up to be a criminal and the friendships and enemies are made during those times. Black Mass also tries to have several of its own “How am I Funny?” scenes with Depp coming out with a smart quip or philosophical quote, with many of them being my favourite scenes of the movie. These smaller scenes are the best parts of Black Mass, with conversations around breakfast and dinner tables, over drinks in bars and in cars full of gangsters, making the film come to life for a few brief minutes before it slams back down into mediocrity with a long bout of police procedural work.

Subplots come in and out of the film all the time, sometimes smothering the main plot with several incidental meetings and characters. All of these range from dull to almost interesting, but given the astonishing real-life story at the heart of Black Mass, the film never really focuses on it. Instead, the film just watches from the sidelines and in doing so gets tangled up amongst all the excess baggage. When good stories are wasted it make the film even more annoying, knowing that there should and could be a really good crime story at the heart of it.

In summary, Black Mass feels very much like a film that tries to emulate several other gangster/crime films (Goodfellas obviously, but I can also see hints of several other Scorsese films, 2015’s Legend as well as 2013’s American Hustle) but doesn’t bring enough emotional depth or character depth to make it anything more than just a well-made film.

Score: 6/10 Only watch it for some of Depp’s career-best work.

 

Killing Them Softly Review

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Preface

Killing Them Softly has been on my list of films to watch. I always see it on sale but never actually buy it, saying I’ll get it next time. But eventually, I went and got it after hearing great things about it, so here’s my review.

Review

Killing Them Softly stars Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta and is written and directed by Andrew Dominik. Based on the novel Cogan’s Trade by George V. Higgins, the film follows mob enforcer Jackie Cogan (Pitt) as he is brought into solve the economic crisis that has hit the mob world.

While the original novel is set during the mid 1970s, Killing Them Softly updates the story to late 2008, using the banking crisis and the election of Barack Obama to parallel the main story in the film. This dual narrative is played throughout radio and televisions in the world, almost giving a subtle commentary that the mobsters and racketeers at the bottom of the ladder are just as sleazy as the bankers at the top.

Despite being tied to the banking crisis, the story almost feels timeless, with the clothing styles of the characters, the cars they drive and especially with the choice of music that plays throughout the film. The music flits between decades with songs like Johnny Cash’s “When The Man Comes Around“, “Money (That’s What I Want)” by Barrett Strong and “Love Letters” by Kitty Lester, making the film a mash up of the 2000s and of the early 50s and 60s. This reuse of music ties in with how the central story is about characters doing the same things over and over again, it’s a clever way to tell us, the audience, that this is just a routine occurrence and it’s a normal day for the characters on screen.

Brad Pitt is at the top of his game as hitman Jackie Cogan, a man who observes everything, doesn’t get involved and is somehow oddly delicate about his job of murdering people. As he remarks to Richard Jenkins during the film, when tasked with killing someone, he likes to “kill them softly.” James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta are the most fascinating characters, who are so high on their own machismo and place with the male-dominated world of the mafia that when they are in turmoil they start crying and wailing, turning into scared little children. Richard Jenkins plays the role he has done in a million other films, as the older man who has stuck around for longer than he should have, but his interactions with Brad Pitt in the film make up for the rather stereotypical casting.

I counted only four women in the film (two of which aren’t on screen, and the other two aren’t on it for less than a few seconds), all of whom are described or characterised by sex or their gender. It’s a film that focuses on the male characters and how they talk to each other and how they describe the women around them, showing that these men (unlike the more romanticised gangsters of years before) should not be looked up to and are rotten to the core. They are despicable, idiotic and diseased, but that makes the film even more enjoyable to watch.

For once, I don’t have to say the film was either too long or too short. Much of my criticism with films nowadays is that directors don’t know how to pace their films, leaving it over-bloated or insubstantial. Killing Them Softly only clocks in at around 90 minutes and it’s the perfect length for the film. Every scene feels like it’s been thought out methodically and has an actual reason for belonging in the film, whether it adds a little bit of back-story to a character or adds more to the puzzle of the story. The last part of dialogue between Brad Pitt and Richard Jenkins is an excellent way to end the film by tying in the banking crisis storyline without becoming preachy, and the last line by Brad Pitt is like a bullet in the way in punches to the heart of his character and his motivation.

In conclusion, Killing Them Softly feels like it takes some of the most overused genre conventions of the gangster film but creates a completely different take on them. If you can stand the hateful characters, the explosive and bloody violence and the ever present swearing, you’ll have a blast.

Score: 10/10 One of the greatest gangster films ever created.