With the career-threatening whiff of hammy howlers such as The Lone Ranger and Mortdecai still lingering in the nostrils, it seems damning with faint praise to say that this true-crime thriller, co-written by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, is Johnny Depp’s best film in years. Yet while director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) coaxes an all-but-unrecognisable performance from Depp as Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, it isn’t quite enough to lift the drama out of the formulaic doldrums. Lacking the deft interpersonal intrigues of Mike Newell’s Donnie Brasco, this settles instead for broad, sub-Scorsesean strokes, right down to a too-close-for-comfort riff on Joe Pesci’s terrifying “Funny how?” routine from Goodfellas.
Swathed in hair and makeup that aims for a hint of the vampiric (but overshoots and winds up invoking Gary Oldman’s campy Dracula), Depp’s Whitey is a “Southie” hood whose brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch) holds the Massachusetts state senate president’s office, and whose best friend, John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), works for the FBI. It’s John who brokers the deal to cut Whitey much criminal slack in return for information that will help bring down his Italian mob rivals. But as murder, drugs and even IRA gun-running become a federal embarrassment, Whitey seems less of an asset than a liability, his closeness to the high-life-loving Connolly bringing the Bureau into disrepute and worse.
The key beats of this story are well rehearsed and even those without prior knowledge of real events (rounded up in a closing credits montage) will know exactly how it plays out. Edgerton breathes bullish life into the thug walking the line between police and thieves and there’s colourful thumbnail support from the likes of Corey Stoll, Kevin Bacon and Peter Sarsgaard.
Yet such talented players as Julianne Nicholson and Juno Temple are often sidelined in a boy’s own affair that finds little space for female characters of the calibre of Lorraine Bracco’s Karen Hill or Diane Keaton’s Kay Adams in the films to which this owes such a weighty debt. The result packs a nasty gangland punch, but lacks the Corleone clout necessary to back up its much-discussed blood-and-honour themes.
