Since getting sucked into a bed and turned into a gory geyser in Wes Craven’s 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, Johnny Depp has led an eclectic, sometimes erratic career. Careening from the esoteric (Cry Baby, Dead Man) to the quirky (Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood), from big-budget blockbusters (Pirates Of The Caribbean, Rango, Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland) to the utterly bizarre (Tusk, Tim Burton’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory), Depp’s career has the odd unpredictability of one of Depp’s characters. So it was with slight confusion and undeniable jubilation that the film corner of Twitter greeted the seething new trailer for Black Mass, which will remind you that Johnny Depp is still a fine actor, not just a guy with an affinity for funny scarves.
Directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out Of The Furnace) and based on Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill’s book of the same name, Black Mass depicts the infamous gangster Whitey Bulger, who killed one person too many and became an FBI informant. (A documentary called WHITEY: United States of America V. James J. Bulger, which insinuates that the government was a sort of cohort to Bulger’s crime reign, came out last June.) From the advent of his criminal career to the twilight (his circuitous career appeared to be coming to an end more times than Peter Jackson’s Return Of The King), the eccentric Bulger basically begged to be turned into a film character. He had a state Senator for a brother, ran drugs, ran South Boston’s felonious underworld, ran with the IRA, and killed a helluva lot of people. He even “won” the Massachusetts lottery in 1991.
Still kicking at 85 today, he’ll ostensibly live to see his legacy manifest in an Oscar-gambit turn by Johnny Depp. Some guys have all the luck.
The trail of the tape
Title: Black Mass
Director: Scott Cooper
Screenwriter: Mark Mallouk, Jez Butterworth
Cast: Johnny Depp, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Joel Edgerton, Dakota Johnson
Release date: September 18, 2010
The entire trailer in a few lines: “You said to me, ‘This is a family secret.’ And you gave it up to me, boom, just like that.”
The entire trailer in one screengrab:
With his hairline hewn and his eyes glazed an icy blue, Depp eschews his ageless good looks, becoming what the kids call “unrecognizable” in the manner of actors looking for a return to credibility. (See: Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder, Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club, Steve Carrell in Foxcatcher.) His stiletto stare seems to stab you right in the heart, and his voice grates like old nails soaked in whiskey. You can see shades of Henry Hill’s deceiving affability, and the subtle menace of Christopher Walken circa True Romance. He may be channeling Al Pacino’s capital-A Acting period, which includes the Depp-starring Donnie Brasco.
That’s not a complaint. The last great role Depp had was six years ago, in Michael Mann’s stunning Public Enemies, a $200-million-plus-earning movie that time has somehow left behind. If Depp’s turn in Black Mass can spur a second wind for the 51-year-old actor, it would be one of the best, most welcome critical comebacks since Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction, or maybe even John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.