Black Mass
Warner Bros. | Release Date: September 18, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
68
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 43 Critic Reviews
Positive:
32
Mixed:
11
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
VarietyScott FoundasSep 4, 2015
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. Read full review
88
USA TodayBrian TruittSep 17, 2015
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. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversSep 17, 2015
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. Read full review
88
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeSep 4, 2015
This is Depp’s show all the way, featuring his best dramatic performance since another organized-crime movie, 1997’s “Donnie Brasco.” Read full review
80
EmpireChris Hewitt (1)Nov 23, 2015
Compelling and powerfully acted, with just enough wrinkles to avoid the ghosts of gangster movies past. Depp's appearance might distract some, but it's good to see him back in the groove. Read full review
80
Time OutNeil SmithNov 23, 2015
Though the women could be stronger and the accents occasionally jar, cooper’s study of moral corruption enthrals. The Johnny-ssance starts here! Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranSep 17, 2015
If the final result doesn't transcend emotionally in the manner of the gold standard of Boston noir, Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River," the fault is not in the execution but the unyieldingly oppressive nature of the underlying material. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternSep 17, 2015
The film, directed with exceptional flair and elegant concision by Scott Cooper, even comes from Warner Bros., the studio that specialized in psychopathic monsters played by such stars as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson during Hollywood’s golden age. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzSep 17, 2015
The acting in Black Mass is tremendous. Read full review
80
Screen DailyLee MarshallSep 4, 2015
Johnny Depp’s broodingly psychotic turn as convicted Boston crime lord James ‘Whitey’ Bulger is not the only tasty thing about Scott Cooper’s tale of the unholy alliance between a South Boston Irish mobster and the FBI. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 4, 2015
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. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerSep 18, 2015
Black Mass is like a playlist of greatest hits from other, better movies. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzSep 18, 2015
For all of its flaws, it's the first film since "Eastern Promises" that has added anything truly fresh to the old school street-level gangster story. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaSep 17, 2015
Black Mass, a down and dirty crime drama based on the exploits of Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, is thrilling for a number of reasons. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickSep 17, 2015
While highly entertaining and sometimes inspired, Black Mass is more like Scorsese lite. In perhaps the most memorable sequence, Bulger sardonically tests a childhood friend (Joel Edgerton) for loyalty by teasing out a “secret” steak sauce in what’s basically a reworking/homage of Joe Pesci’s famous “I’m funny, how?” scene in “GoodFellas.” Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 17, 2015
This is a good, solid, well-executed crime story. Nothing more, nothing less. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubSep 17, 2015
A solid piece of filmmaking, from subtle beginning to the excessive end. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 17, 2015
As a dramatic thriller, Black Mass has trouble getting into low orbit. There are some tremendous scenes but the narrative as a whole feels more like a chronology of dastardly dealings than the epic tale of a criminal's rise and fall. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsSep 17, 2015
If anything, director Cooper is so intent on portraying Bulger as a man, not a monster, the man comes off a little softer than he was, probably. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerSep 16, 2015
Without an emotional core, a stronger sociological angle, or many visceral thrills, Black Mass more or less limits itself to procedural status. Within those aims, it’s a pretty good one, absorbing and well-made. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatySep 15, 2015
Cooper, the director of Crazy Heart and the underrated Out of the Furnace, has made a tight and tense gangster film with Black Mass. But it’s a pretty straight-ahead entry in the genre, albeit one peppered with spicy performances. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 15, 2015
The “banality of evil” was never so hypocritical, so banal and so evil. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensSep 18, 2015
Depp's performance as Bulger is as strong, and as energized, as anything he's done on screen for years. Read full review
70
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekSep 15, 2015
Black Mass is a tightly wound piece of work, and Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) keeps its many small parts moving with ease. He's skillful at merging telling, minute details with bigger, looping schemes. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthySep 4, 2015
Depp's instinct for observing, underlaying and keeping things in, then letting it all out when required, pays big dividends here in a performance far more convincing than his previous big gangster role, John Dillinger in Michael Mann's Public Enemies; it's unexpected, very welcome at this point in his career, and one of his best. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianMarc MohanSep 18, 2015
He's good, but Depp can't quite annihilate the self-consciousness that makes some of his more light-hearted work shine. Too often, it feels like he's channeling other actors: here he's Jack Nicholson with Hunter S. Thompson's nose, there he's an Irish-American Ray Liotta. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesSep 16, 2015
By necessity, Black Mass begins in a hole it can never dig out of. It’s the portrait of a monster told in a flat line. Read full review
67
HitfixGregory EllwoodSep 8, 2015
Despite Depp’s seemingly flawless efforts, less may have been more in conveying just how bloodthirsty Bulger was. Where “Mass” excels is with a stellar cast whose spot on performances keep your interest as the film moves along. Read full review
67
IndieWireEric KohnSep 7, 2015
As a movie, Black Mass often drowns its dramatic potential in a dreary atmosphere and grisly violence used to dubious effect. Depp, however, operates on another level. Read full review
67
The PlaylistJessica KiangSep 4, 2015
There is nothing underneath the glossy surface and no real insight into what made this man tick — and despite how creepy he looks here, Bulger was a man, not a devil. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanOct 2, 2015
It’s a well-crafted, well-paced procedural drama about a monotonous psychopath. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrSep 17, 2015
It’s a solid if not stellar crime drama, well put together, very well acted, and lacking only a genuine reason to exist. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony LaneSep 21, 2015
The movie is often absorbing, and skillfully played, but, along with its snarling hero, it doesn’t have much time for ordinary folk. By the end, like Marianne, we are left gasping for air. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierSep 17, 2015
The movie itself is an intriguing but ultimately unspecial Feds-vs.-hoods drama. But as the sinister, snakelike South Boston criminal Whitey Bulger, Depp delivers. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleSep 4, 2015
Black Mass is ultimately a decent film with some great parts, but unfortunately it falls short of the canon to which it aspires. Read full review
60
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 4, 2015
It’s hard to shake the suspicion that Depp is playing a type – almost as if he’s trying to replicate the kind of performance Nicholson might have given in the same role. You long for him to roll his sleeves up and grasp the character’s shape and soul himself, ideally without the aid of those distracting prosthetics. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonDave CalhounSep 4, 2015
It’s Bulger whose grim appearance and even grimmer behaviour ‘Black Mass’ indulges. But it’s the quieter, more complicated Connolly who offers the film’s subtler pleasures. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinSep 18, 2015
Johnny Depp makes a valiant stab at the part, but even with his hair thinned and lightened and his face hardened, Depp remains Depp: I never forgot I was watching a big star doing an impersonation. It’s as if the spirit of a psychopath like Bulger resists the camera. Or maybe the movie isn’t imaginative enough to penetrate his shell. Read full review
50
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallSep 17, 2015
By all accounts, Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger was a monster. That's exactly how Johnny Depp plays him in Black Mass, a dark blob of underworld cliches and bad contact lenses. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadaySep 17, 2015
Even filmmakers and actors as fine as these haven’t managed to solve one of cinema’s most enduring challenges — making criminals interesting without exalting them. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezSep 17, 2015
Depp isn’t doing anything different here than he did in "Dark Shadows" or "Alice in Wonderland" or the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies. Once again, he’s unrecognizable under elaborate makeup and prosthetics, and he speaks with a peculiar voice (this time a thick South Boston accent). Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottSep 17, 2015
Mr. Cooper’s direction is skillful, if overly reliant on borrowed Scorseseisms (especially when it comes to music), and the cast is first-rate, but the film is a muddle of secondhand attitudes and half-baked ideas. It feels more like a costume party than a costume drama. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineChristopher GraySep 16, 2015
Like any crime saga without a more potent thematic hook, the film's relentlessly insular script dwells on themes of loyalty and fraternity. Read full review
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