Johnny Depp ditches the drollery for a darker and more dramatic role in the upcoming action drama ”Black Mass.”
As a longtime Johnny Depp fan, the new “Black Mass” trailer really has me speechless… and in a good way. Depp, who I once considered to be an actor’s actor, has since departed from the odd and independent at which he excelled and entered the mainstream and light hearted. A move that, although perhaps financially successful, has been both critically disastrous and a let down for so many craft hungry Depp fans like myself. The new “Black Mass” trailer gives Depp fans hope for cinematic salvation.
The film, penned by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth and directed by Scott Cooper, is based on the 2001 book “Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob” written by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill. It depicts the true story of Whitey Bulger, both the brother of a Massachusetts state senator as well as perhaps the most infamous violent criminal in South Boston history. After a prolonged reoccurrence of violent crimes, Bulger becomes an FBI informant to take down an encroaching rival Mafia family.
The trailer is both gripping and outright weird. We meet an aged, oddly dull contact lensed, and gruff Whitey Bulger (Depp), who appears to be a crime boss who has in the past spent the better part of a decade serving time in Alcatraz. Given Depp’s ability to excel in roles based on true life characters, such as George Jung in “Blow,” a cross-dressing b-movie director in “Ed Wood,” and Raoul Duke (channeling Hunter S. Thompson) in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (meh…why not), this may be Depp’s re-introduction to Drama.
With a jarringly A-List cast also featuring Kevin Bacon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Joel Edgerton, Sienna Miller and Dakota Johnson, this film is either destined for greatness or, with so many chefs in the kitchen, doomed to spoil the broth.