Category: Joel Edgerton

BLACK MASS

By Marc S. Sanders

Black Mass tells the story of an FBI agent, and his two childhood friends who are brothers.  One brother is Billy Bulger, a Massachusetts state senator.  The other is notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger.  The script has a lot of elements to make for a great crime drama, but I wonder what Johnny Depp is doing here made up to perform like a crazed ghoul.

The FBI agent is John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) who turns to Whitey (Depp), a fearful leader of the Irish mob in South Boston during the nineteen seventies through eighties to work as an informant, providing intel on the competing Italian Mafia.  It’s no secret about Whitey Bulger’s dealings or what territory he covers.  Agent Connolly does his best to protect his friend, so long as he collects pertinent information that leads to arrests.  However, what’s the limit to Bulger’s activities, and how does this reflect on a public figure like Whitey’s politician brother, Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch)?

Much of Black Mass reenacts recorded testimonies after everything has shaken out.  Guys who survived Whitey’s violent crew (Jesse Plemmons, Rory Cochrane) offer information on the gangster’s activities and what he compelled his captains to carry out.  Mixed in with these voiceovers are how Connolly responds to the progress of his operations.  Time and again, his superiors (first played by Kevin Bacon and later by Corey Stoll) question Connolly about how beneficial Bulger can be if the crook always has his finger on the trigger, killing those that might rat him out.  Black Mass is told from an assortment of different perspectives and sometimes that muddies the water.

The most interesting storyline is how Connolly uses and protects his criminal friend, while also stepping away from getting blood on his hands.  Joel Edgerton gives the best performance of the film as an FBI guy who turns a blind eye to Whitey’s crimes. Connolly thinks he can continue his own corruption while Whitey cooperates and leads him to big, heroic indictments of the Italian mob.  As long as the arrangement upholds, the corrupt agent will always have an answer for his actions and stay ahead of the ethical lines he knows he’s crossing.  More importantly, even if his wife protests, Connolly is getting prestigious promotions and collecting substantial paychecks for his progress.  Scott Cooper directs Edgerton with conflicts of overwhelming complications.

One problem is that Whitey Bulger is a loose cannon who is never intimidated, not even by the Feds, especially not by his childhood friend.  His brother Billy looks away to maintain a clean political image.  Therefore, it is quite easy for Whitey to gun down a rat associate in broad daylight in the middle of a wide-open parking lot, shotgun and all.  The killer doesn’t even need to run away from the scene of the crime.  This is Whitey Bulger.

Johnny Depp is great in the role, but does his portrayal belong in this film?  Depp’s career is widely celebrated for the quirky, makeup clad parts he plays such as Jack Sparrow and Edward Scissorhands.  Even Ed Wood is delightfully weird.  In Black Mass, the actor dons steel grey eye contacts, white slicked back hair making him appear almost bald, and skeletal teeth beneath a near albino complexion.  He looks like Skeletor without the hood.  Throw in a brooding, deep Bostonian accent and you have the ghoul I referred to earlier.  Is this Whitey Bulger?  Online photos of the real guy do not seem consistent with the film’s appearance.  Depp’s delivery of dialogue and even his wicked Freddy Krueger laugh seem too far beyond the realm of this crime drama.  The actor is working on another plane than everyone else in the cast who wear hairpieces, three-piece cotton suits and cheesy off-the-rack polyesters and denims to populate this time period from forty years ago. 

A scene showing Bulger dining on steaks with Connolly and his FBI partner (David Harbor) was famously used in preview showings ahead of the film’s release.  Take this scene out of context like the trailer did and Depp looks scary good as he terrifies Harbor for doing something as simple as revealing a long-time secret family recipe.  Afterwards, Whitey goes upstairs to harass Connolly’s wife (Julianne Nicholson) at the bedroom door.  The dinner scene sold me on getting a ticket for the movie as soon as it was released.  However, put it back into the framework of the script and I feel like Black Mass is diverting itself from a complex crime drama to a vampire in a Member’s Only jacket.  As good as Depp is with his makeup and his vocal inflections and pace, it just doesn’t seem to belong in this particular film.  Marlon Brando as Don Corleone with the shoe polish in the hair and the cotton in the mouth? That works.  Johnny Depp as Count Dracula in Sergio Valente skinny jeans is not as effective.

Because the script changes hands from one perspective to another and then another, I found the reenactments of Connolly and Bulger’s reign of crimes to be a little inconsistent.  I found much potential for Benedict Cumberbatch’s purpose as Whitey’s brother, but there is too much diverted away from that character because the picture is trafficked with what everyone else is doing and seeing on top of giving Johnny Depp a lot of scenery to chew.

Black Mass pursued the potential for a very interesting gangster picture like Goodfellas or Donnie Brasco, but it wants to capitalize too much on the latest Johnny Depp routine.  I think James “Whitey” Bulger is an interesting twentieth century bad guy with a violently daring and checkered background.  He had associates within his family and gang to color in a movie that’ll grab you.  The tainted lawmen who were involved are also intriguing.  Scott Cooper and the screenwriters knew this, but often they opt to go in different directions.  

Now that a loose interpretation of Bulger has been played by Jack Nicholson in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar winning The Departed and again here, it’s time to tell the cold-blooded killer’s story once more.  Just go simpler without all the clownish theatrics.

THE GIFT

By Marc S. Sanders

Blumhouse Pictures had a monster year in 2017 with the release of Jordan Peele’s smash hit thriller Get Out.  It was by no means some slasher film for cheap scares.  It built on those typical shocks to deliver a message over a well-crafted three act storyline that commented on present day race relations while the action of it all knocked the hell out of you.  Get Out was one of my favorite films of that year.  

Having just watched Joel Edgerton’s The Gift from 2015, I see a pattern from Blumhouse.  This is a company intent on making high grade material on very small budgets.  This company knows how to spend its money wisely, while showing you something that looks familiar but is altogether new.

Edgerton wrote and costars in The Gift as a stranger who intrudes on the life of a happy couple with a promising future, played with great chemistry by Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall.  

Casting Bateman and Hall was a smart move.  In other respective efforts from both actors, they are at their best by giving the less is more approach to their resume of performances.  In this film, they come off as nothing special really when the film begins; happy and minding their own business.  It’s important because it enhances the disruption of Edgerton’s character, Gordo “the weirdo.” All that Gordo is doing is being friendly by leaving gifts on the couple’s doorstep. Harmless, really, but I found my own instincts on alert. The question is, however, was I ever right to question my instincts in the first place.

The Gift is a top notch psychological thriller.  Do Edgerton and Blumhouse follow the same trite cliches of suspense films like this though? That’s what is eye catching about the film.  You really don’t know how developments are going to end up until the movie is completely over.  For the most part, this film is wildly unpredictable.

I really liked it.  It was a new kind of disturbed piece written with foreshadowed detail by Edgerton.  He writes with common, nervously laughable awkwardness for his couple to struggle with.  This new guy is only signing his cards with happy faces and leaving gifts.  What’s so wrong about that?  

Edgerton’s direction is just as fine with wide shots during the daytime suburban scenes to offer comfort for Hall’s housewife character, and a narrow lens to unsettle you as you peer down a dark endless hallway.  For cripes sakes, it’s only your house.  Is your new house really that scary?

The ending is satisfying for me even if I did predict an early scene would return to make its point later.  Narratively speaking though, I credit the screenplay for inventing something beyond a final fight that would probably include kitchen knives and crashes through windows followed by someone falling to his gruesome death from a great height, or drowning a villain in a bathtub before shooting him when he miraculously comes back to life. 

See, that’s what the other movies are doing. Films like The Gift and Get Out are completely doing something else entirely.

MIDNIGHT SPECIAL (2016)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Jeff Nichols
Cast: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Sam Shepard
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 83% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Two men go on the run with a child in tow, pursued by federal agents and by members of a cult who believe the child has special powers.


The general concept of “mystery” in a film is a subtle art.  Not enough mystery, and people will say they’ve seen it all before.  Too much mystery, and people will wonder why they’ve spent good money to be confused for two hours.

Every now and then, though, a movie comes along that shows everyone else how it’s done.  It manages to plunge the viewer headlong into the story with little to no exposition, provides just enough clues to keep things intriguing without giving the game away, and supplies a climax that is not just satisfying, but revelatory.  Prometheus is one of those movies.  So is Freaks (2018).

And so is Midnight Special, from director and screenwriter Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud).

This movie grabs you right from the opening minutes.  Two men appear to be holed up in a hotel room with a young boy wearing blue swim goggles.  Cardboard and duct tape cover the windows.  A news broadcast on the TV reports on the young boy’s kidnapping.  However, he does not appear to be distressed in any way.  One of the men may or may not be his father.  He goes willingly when they vacate the room and hit the road.

In another part of the country, a pastor watches the same newscast with concern.  He later leads a church service, but the scripture reading consists of non-sequiturs and random numbers.  The FBI interrupts the service and hauls each and every church member in for questioning about the missing boy.

What the deuce is going on here?  How is this church connected to the boy?  Where are the two men taking the boy?  What’s with the blue goggles?  What is so important about this boy that the two men with him would be willing to kill for him?

These are all very good questions.  Whenever the movie takes the time to answer one of the questions, two more spring up in its place.  And I may as well tell you now: not every question will get an answer.  But instead of feeling frustrated, I just got more and more involved in the film.  I felt like I was an active participant in figuring out the story, along with the characters.  There’s nothing quite like feeling involved in a movie, rather than simply watching a movie.

When the revelations arrive about where the men are headed with the boy, why they’re headed there, and why the FBI is interested, I’m not gonna lie, I was gobsmacked.  In retrospect, I suppose I should have seen some of the plot points coming a mile away.  But that’s the beauty of the screenplay and the direction.  I wasn’t interested in trying to second guess what surprises were in store.  As a result, when the surprises arrived, I was constantly in a state of jaw-dropping amazement.

I would also like to point out the great restraint used by the filmmakers when it came to the few scenes that required CGI enhancement.  There are a hundred ways these scenes could have gone wrong, resulting in a shot that completely takes you out of the movie.  They avoided all those pitfalls and instead created scenes of startling beauty, even when things seem to be going wrong…or when they at last go right.

This is a movie that deserves to be seen with as clean a slate as possible.  It didn’t exactly make a dent in the pop-culture zeitgeist, so it’s not likely you’ll see any spoilers on the internet without Googling the movie, but why would you want to do that?  Keep an open mind, don’t ask how it ends, and find a way to see this movie.  You won’t be disappointed.