Black Mass fails to light a fire

There's an episode of David Mitchell's brilliant YouTube series Soapbox in which he talks about the problem with gangster movies: one great film about gangsters gets made in the seventies, he argues, and suddenly everyone thinks they can make three hour long dirges filled with smoky wood-finished rooms, hilariously thick swear-riddled accents, and overly masculine geriatric men droning on and on about who's next to get whacked. He blames The Godfather. It feels almost unfair to compare any film to The Godfather, except perhaps The Godfather Part II, but watching the Boston-set crime drama Black Mass, it's easy to see what Mitchell was on about.

‘Based on true events’, Black Mass recounts the story of Whitey Bulger (Johnny Depp), South Boston's most notorious (and that's saying quite a lot) mobster, and his rise to kingpin status with the collaboration of FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton). But while the story itself may be true, so many similar things have been done so many times before – fictional or otherwise – that the subject matter begins to feel stale within minutes of the multiple-perspective frame narration's rambling beginnings. The brooding Mafioso sinking into the cesspool of his own evil, the corrupt police force, the endless string of murders – certainly almost all of this has been done before, and done much better.

While Black Mass has enough to make it more worth watching than most crime flick affairs, it unfortunately doesn't quite have enough to make it much more than entertaining in passing

Thankfully Black Mass manages to set itself apart from the pack somewhat with a few flash touches of its own. The functional but by-the-numbers script is made up for by the subtly excellent editing: during most conversations, cuts between shots of the faces of each person involved come thick and fast. With the stone-cold faces but frantically searching eyes of the performers, these quick cuts create a powerful sense of the constant anxiety and paranoia that comes with living on the edges of the law, and the thought that capture is always hiding right behind the nearest bush. The relationship between Bulger and Connolly gives the movie a strong emotional pull; it's not corruption or bribery that keeps the agent from spilling the beans, but a deep friendship forged on the streets of Southy, and his willingness to fight for his blood brother even in the most desperate of times is something not many films like this have touched upon as well as this one does.

What baffles me about gangster movies is how they unfailingly draw excellent performances from their cast. Black Mass is no exception: Depp's performance as Bulger has been rightfully hailed as a searing return to form, and he hasn't been this commanding in a role since the first Pirates of the Carribbean; Joel Edgerton as well is on fine form, flexing his acting muscles with a wide range of fully believable emotions. Even ensemble turns are fantastic: Peter Sarsgaard's crazed, cocaine-addicted rat and Corey Stoll's FBI bulldog hell-bent on ending Bulger's reign have precious few minutes of screen time each, but both of them steal every second of it.

While Black Mass has enough to make it more worth watching than most crime flick affairs, it unfortunately doesn't quite have enough to make it much more than entertaining in passing; it's all just a bit normal. Once you've seen one gangster movie, it would appear you've seen them all, and – sad as the fact is – not every movie can be The Godfather.