Black Mass

It reviews better than it plays — admired more than it is enjoyed.

• “If Johnny Depp’s mesmerizing performance — a bracing return to form for the star after a series of critical and commercial misfires — is the chief selling point of Black Mass, there is much else to recommend this sober, sprawling, deeply engrossing evocation of Bulger’s South Boston fiefdom and his complex relationship with the FBI agent John Connolly, played with equally impressive skill by Joel Edgerton.”

  Scott Foundas, Variety · 90

• “This is Depp’s show all the way, featuring his best dramatic performance since another organized-crime movie, 1997’s “Donnie Brasco.””

  Alonso Duralde, TheWrap · 88

• “Ice-cold. Dead eyes. Demonic laugh. His face a mask you can't read until he's up in yours. Then run. That's Johnny Depp giving everything he's got in a riveting, rattlesnake performance as South Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger in Black Mass.”

  Peter Travers, Rolling Stone · 88

• “As notorious gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, Depp astounds with one of the best performances in his long career while co-star Joel Edgerton steps up equally well as John Connolly, an ethically questionable FBI agent who flirts with the wrong side of the law.”

  Brian Truitt, USA Today · 88

• “Scott Cooper’s Black Mass is a big, brash, horribly watchable gangster picture taken from an extraordinary true story and conceived on familiar generic lines.”

  Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian · 80