LONDON CITY NIGHTS

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

'Black Mass' (2015) directed by Scott Cooper [London Film Festival 2015]

Tuesday, October 13, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

 Johnny Depp's regression from ultra-cool indie darling to flouncing tit depressed the hell out of me. Outright classics like Edward Scissorhands, Dead Man, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Ed Wood cemented him as someone willing to take on risky projects and deliver complex, innovative performances. Then came Captain Jack Sparrow, Willy Wonka, the Mad Hatter and finally, the cruellest blow of all, the truly execrable Mortdecai.

After suffering through Mortdecai this January I wrote: "Mr Depp, you need to stop. This is rock bottom. Put down the silly hats. Take off the beads. Throw away the eyeliner. Mr Depp, stop. Please stop." Mercifully, at least in Black Mass, he has.

Depp plays James "Whitey" Bulger, a vicious Boston crimelord who gradually seized control of the city. A textbook psychopath, his complete lack of conscience and fierce intelligence make him a natural and successful gangster. Black Mass shows us Whiteys inexorable rise to the upper echelons of organised crime, with a focus on his relationship with FBI Agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton).

Connolly and Whitey were childhood friends, growing up in the tightly-knit south side of Boston. Though they've ended up on opposite sides of the law, they're still Southie boys, and Connolly sees the connection as an opportunity. Approaching Whitey, the two form an 'alliance'; Whitey's gangland insider knowledge being used to take down the Italian Mafia and Connolly using his influence to get the FBI to tolerate Whitey's growing crime empire.

Higher-ups in the FBI grow increasingly uncomfortable with the arrangement, suspecting that the information Whitey's feeding them is useless and disturbed that anyone who informs on Whitey to them quickly ends up dead. As the years tick by the boundaries between gangster and federal agent gradually blur in a hail of bullets, blood and expensive steaks.

The obvious centrepiece of Black Mass is Depp's Whitey. Swaddled under reams of latex, with a receding hairline, sunken cheeks and ice-blue eyes, he's only just plausible as an actual flesh and blood human being. Despite looking a bit Dick Tracy, this lizardlike visage is hugely effective and actually intimidating. Depp takes this opportunity to suppress his flamboyant tics, achieving a scarily focussed intensity. Lots of this is in his beady eyes; they regard the people around him with eerie intensity - like a snake regarding a mouse.

That said, Edgerton more than holds his own. With a square-jawed, square-shouldered and square-haired figure, he looks confident, assertive and successful. He prides his masculinity, seeing both his FBI work and his Southie roots as validations of his personality. It's precisely that which makes him so vulnerable to corruption; eager to paint himself as a hero and ignore any negative repercussions of his tactics. The really depressing thing is that we quickly understand that Connolly's ego, ability to cross ethical boundaries to get what he wants and high ambitions would have made him a pretty damn good gangster - but he's a terrible FBI Agent.

It's their relationship that forms the titular Black Mass, with Whitey in the role of Satan and Connolly selling his soul. This mythic element bumps up the film from above-average gangster flick to something pretty special - and it's here that Depp's outré make-up finally reveals its true purpose. Whitey doesn't look human because he isn't human - he is Satan wearing a human skin: tempting, corrupting and sucking away every molecule of goodness from the world around him.

The core Whitey/Connolly relationship is elevated by a fine supporting cast. Dakota Johnson and Julianne Nicholson both find something new in the extremely well-trodden territory of 'miserable gangster's wife'. The thugs surrounding Whitey also come off well, particularly Jesse Plemons, whose wonderfully evocative mug kicks off the film. Special notice too for Benedict Cumberbatch - he maybe wouldn't be at the top of my list for playing a guy from the mean streets of Boston, but he does an admirable job with both accent and character.

As far as gangster films go, Black Mass isn't quite in the top tier. But when the top tier consists of the first two Godfather films, Goodfellas and Once Upon a Time in America you're going to be hard pressed to equal them. Instead it happily slots into the only-slightly-lesser 'really good gangster movie' category, alongside fare like Carlito's Way, Donnie Brasco and Miller's Crossing.

It also proves that Depp has still got the goods  - let's hope that future years will provide a wealth of interesting, creative performances from him. Then again, Pirates of the Caribbean 5 is shambling its way into cinemas in 2017 so let's not count our chickens...

★★★★

Black Mass is released 27 November 2015.

Friday, January 23, 2015

'Mortdecai' (2015) directed by David Koepp

Friday, January 23, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

In the absence of press screenings (always a worrying sign) I trooped up to Angel and forked out for a ticket. At the Islington Vue they directed me to a tiny screen I'd never even noticed before, tucked away under the stairs next to the fire exit. I was greeted with a small, empty cinema occupied solely by a bearded old man in a giant coat.  He nodded as I passed him, then I smelt the TCP.  The guy stank of it - he must have been glugging bottles of the stuff

Nobody else showed up. Ten minutes into Mortdecai I heard the sound of peaceful snoring, which proved to continue for the duration. I figure he came to the cinema purely for the warmth. I've got to commend him for getting something positive out of this experience, because all I got was a sucking sense of horror, disappointment and  boredom.

Mortdecai is an embarrassment for all involved; from Johnny Depp's crushingly unfunny lead through David Koepps's amateurish direction, through the score that sounds like The Real Slim Shady right down to the mangy mongrel of a script they're grinding their way through. Apparently Mortdecai is based on a series of books by a guy called Kyril Bonfiglioli, but I'll be damned if I've ever heard of them. Now, the advertising campaign for Mortdecai has been awfully vague about what this film is actually about, so let me fill you in.

Hilarious!

Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) is a wacky upper-class English art dealer who travels the world getting into unlikely scrapes with his manservant (Paul Bettany). He lives in some old country pile with his long suffering wife Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow), who's exasperated at Mortdecai for frittering away their money on some kooky scheme or another. Now, after an £8 million tax bill, they're at the point of insolvency, selling their family heirlooms and even *gasp* considering opening the house to the public.

The film itself revolves around Mortdecai attempting to secure a long lost Goya painting that'll solve his worries and pay off his taxes. Heading the investigation is MI5's Martland (Ewan McGregor) a university friend of Mortdecai who's also in love with his wife. Tracking down the painting involves all kinds of unlikely scrapes, misunderstandings and crap puns. Naturally this is all hilarious.

Oh wait.

No.

It's not hilarious. This is shit.

Mortdecai turns out to be the awful (yet logical) conclusion of Johnny Depp's success in Pirates of the Caribbean.  12 years ago he thrilled audience with the vulgar, semi-drunken louche Captain Jack Sparrow. Women wanted him, men wanted to be him; his performance singlehandedly launching a multibillion dollar franchise that still threatens multiplexes to this day. After Pirates nobody could tell Depp to stop acting like an ass, so we got Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Lone Ranger. With each self-consciously zany role Depp sacrificed a fragment of audience goodwill. Mortdecai marks the moment that goodwill runs out completely.

Watching him cavort about the screen is like watching a drunken uncle at a embarrass himself at a wedding. You cringe and watch through your fingers as he tries to chat up the bridesmaids, attempts to take the stage to sing with the band and crack bad jokes. Everyone sits there in frozen horror at what they're watching, wishing someone would take him outside and call him a cab.

Mortdecai is so stupendously crap that you might suspect it's some elaborate form of flagellation, a suicide pill of a script designed to torpedo careers. But Depp behaves as this is the height of humour, bumbling like a cut-rate Inspector Clouseau through lifeless slapstick and inane misunderstandings. At one particularly low point he has to shuffle down a corridor with a boner sticking out of his pants. Worryingly, there's no hint of shame as he does this -  as if Depp genuinely, truly believes that people will lap this shit up. I can only compare this sense of comedy delusion to Mike Myers' similarly disastrous The Love Guru.

It's difficult to convey just how off-putting the Mortdecai character is; constructed with the idea that we'll be charmed by his eccentricity and root for him against the squares. But the combination of Depp's comedy cockney accent, the stupid moustache and the sub-vocal wibblings add up to a truly hateful cinematic creation who you wish the very worst for.

An unhappy Paul Bettany

The rest of the cast approach the material with a combination of desperation and gritted-teeth professionalism. Ewan McGregor and Gwyneth Paltrow do their level best to get through this unscathed, gingerly interacting with Depp as if he's a much-loved relative in the early stages of dementia. In Paul Bettany the misery is more obvious; this is a top class actor relegated to the role of moronic comedy butler. Stare into his eyes and you see a man resolving to not just sack, but brutally assault his agent. 

In every possible regard Mortdecai fucking sucks. Tragically everyone knows this but Depp, which is probably why this is being quietly squeaked into cinemas in the ass-end of January sans press screenings. I think it's time to stage an intervention:

Mr Depp, you need to stop. This is rock bottom. Put down the silly hats. Take off the beads. Throw away the eyeliner. For god's sake you're pissing away every happy memory audiences have of you. Look at Nicholas Cage - look at him - do you want to end up like that?! I didn't think so. Mr Depp, stop.

Please stop.

★

Mortdecai is released today.