The day will come when Johnny Depp does not have to cover himself in fifteen layers of makeup, to the point where audiences are staring blankly at the screen wondering IF in fact that’s him doing the acting. But, as a systematic formula that works, people love to see what Depp does with his career next. Thanks to a recent slew of misfires, Lone Ranger or even the the awful Mortdecai, it’s hard not to look at his latest film, Black Mass, and wonder what he was thinking making the last three pictures he did. Although I can say Scott Cooper’s tale of one of the most notorious gangsters in history, Whitey Bulger, is very well done. It’s definitely not the movie it should have been. Trading a comeback performance over a story that has been told, time and time again. Only to suffer at the hands of a makeup job that is too much. This is strictly, by the books, a very entertaining crime drama with no awards prospects. Nothing more. Nothing Less.

How to tell a story that has been rehashed about a dozen times over the course of the last few years – specifically with the trial of Bulger (to which he was sentenced to five life sentences) just wrapping up roughly two or three years ago – won’t be easy. Depp stepping into new unmarked territory as Bulger, a street smart yuppo whose rise in the streets of South Boston is something in itself to marvel at. He did the job he had to. Whether he had to bury somebody who talked back to him, or strangle a prostitute for fear of having her talk to much. In fact: he even guns down a snitch in broad daylight and doesn’t bat an eyelash – this is some spooky stuff.

The ironic thing about Bulger gunning down a snitch is that he would eventually become one, even if he didn’t see it as such. Recruited for his ‘talents’ by long time pal, and a hot young shot detective, John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) who is ready to dethrone one of the more profitable mafia gangs on the east coast. With the help of Bulger that is. Of course, that’s wherein the problem lies. Giving a hard thug free reign to do whatever he needs in order to succeed at his job as an ‘informant’ never seemed like it could be the path less traveled, nor was it going to be ever.  We very briefly meet Bulger’s first (and I assume) only wife Lindsay Cyr (Dakota Johnson), their son, and his brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch) a senator with everything to lose. Some focal points which get lost in the shuffle.

Scott Cooper whose last film, Out Of The Furnace, failed to connect on the level it should have manages to pull the weight of this film from under him. Yet I could not help but feel a sense of discouragement ponder over me while watching this movie. The entirety of the film does not rely 100% on Depp’s performance, although it’s very good. The very baby blue contact lenses, or the receding hairline fracture only seemed to aid a tad. A term I hear often when I’m doing theatre productions, especially when it comes to makeup is that less is more. A note, I’m afraid, these filmmakers could have used.

Obviously with a cast as solid as this one, which includes additional supporting work from Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard and Adam Scott, Black Mass was never doomed to be a terrible film, but it is also a film that won’t live up to its hype, which is infuriating because this is the one flick you want to be damn near perfect. Some battles you just can’t win. While I don’t mean to take away from the face value of the picture, because in the end Black Mass is a tremendous effort that ‘midley’ pays off for what it needed to accomplish. Grade: B