Looks Like ‘Black Mass’ Will Go Down in History As the Last Good Johnny Depp Movie

I thought Black Mass was really well done. I grew up near Boston around that time and Whitey Bulger was always in the news. Depp was unrecognizable in that role. Benedict Cumberbatch was a surprise, didn’t know he was playing Billy, and he was very good in a small role. Also most actors overdo the Boston accent (Mystic River was nails on a chalkboard) but Depp’s sounded natural.

It definitely lived up to the hype.

I hated it. It was way too slow and the pacing as a whole was a mess. Depp gave a cartoonish performance

Just recently saw it and it was horribly violent which kind of ruined it for me. No desire to ever see it again.

It was a surprisingly good performance from Depp in a surprisingly good movie. Even though that should have been Ed Harris's role.

R4, it's a gangster movie. You were expecting a sing-a-long, maybe?

I didn’t even think it was all that violent. Certainly a lot less so than a Scorsese flick.

Bitch look like he auditioning for Rocket Man Part 2.

You have to go back over a decade to find a live-action movie with Depp in a starring role that I’d consider good. That’s Public Enemies from 2009, and even that one is hardly a classic.

I didn’t hate Black Mass, and it’s not an embarrassment like so many of his other movies, but I wouldn’t call it good.

I think Johnny is a good actor when he does roles that are unexpected like Black Mass. He was also very good in Benny & Joon, Blow, Ed Wood and What's Eating Gilbert Grape and the avant-garde film Arizona Dream. I think he got too hung up on doing quirky cartoonish roles like Edward Scissorhands, Jack Sparrow and Mad Hatter which made people associate him with being a big ham with no depth. It's funny because he wanted to be taken seriously when younger due to feeling pigeonholed because of 21 Jump Street. But he ended up becoming a parody of himself in middle age. The nasty divorce between him and Amber Heard really hurt his reputation more so than his history of violent behavior and drug abuse.

At least he showed his hot twink ass in Private Resort. He was at the peak of his beauty in Nightmare on Elm Street and Cry-Baby as that was before he disfigured himself with poorly planned tattoos and seemed to stop showering and shaving.

I live in Boston (Dorchester) and two of the houses on my street were selected to be in the interior/exterior scenes of Black Mass. One is a grand Victorian intended to represent his brother’s house (MA Senate President) and another, a bland 60s ranch was used to represent a thug hitman’s house in a blue collar suburb. The 90 year old owner of the ranch keeps it immaculate but hasn’t updated a single thing since 1965 so it was perfect. The Victorian house’s beautiful grounds were sprayed with vinegar to burn the July summer greenery in order to create a winter scene decorated for Christmas. It was surreal seeing an actual Christmas in July.

Fortunately the production company had to pay me to use my property to run power cords for lighting and such so at least I got some money out of the inconvenience of having yet another shitty production in my hood. A neighbor is in the business so I swear anything “Boston” is at least partially filmed here. The SMILF cast & production company from a Showtime were really cool, though.

Anyway, I think Depp did a good job in a disappointing movie (the accents were more painful than a real Boston accent) but he wasn’t the best choice for the roll by any measure.

Hard to believe the he used to look like this. He would have aged well and he did for a while until the drugs and alcohol finally caught up to him. Now he is bloated and lost his teeth.

[QUOTE] but he wasn’t the best choice for the roll by any measure.

Oh, dear. Maybe brioche would’ve been the superior choice?

R14 mea culpa. I saw that as soon as it posted but was hoping it would slide. No such luck on the DL 😜. Can I blame auto-correct?

That "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" JK Rowling shit / whatever was a perfectly adequate movie.

Just because Depp was hated by the time some of these movies were released doesn't mean they were bad movies.

What are you talking about, R16? That movie was asscheeks.

R16 that movie bombed

R16 = that one guy on Twitter trying to convince everyone to give Fantastic Beasts another chance

Keanu Reeves really is the only 80s teen heartthrob who is still perceived as cool and fresh into his middle age.

Sad. He had potential and has had some great performances. Now he’s a joke.

He's an addict with a lot of resources to get help if he wants it. It may end up being court mandated.

I guarantee unless he dies, there will be some memorable Depp performances to come. There is no shortage of work out there for Depp, only a shortage of extremely high paying work that can build his drugged out lifestyle (sleeping late) into the schedule.

My bet is he sobers up at some point. As with all addicts, relapses are part of the game or always a risk, but if he sobers up and wants to work, he will have a full schedule.

He obviously needs psychological help for whatever mental illness he has. That Rolling Stone expose showed that Depp still has trauma from his childhood that he hasn't worked though. At the end of the day, he's a country bumpkin with no education who got extremely famous and wealthy through his good looks and having some talent. He still has the family history of addiction, mental illness and poverty that continues to haunt him. No different from Elvis or Britney Spears who are also Appalachians. He's like a Faulkner novel.

Agreed, R23. I'm also not sure that Depp's dance card will be full if he sobers up. Half his appeal came from his looks, and those are gone for good.

There’s plenty of roles for an older gentleman actor so long as he doesn’t lose his hair.

I preferred The Departed for accents and story but Depp was okay in Black Mass.

Yes, The Departed is the better, more memorable film. But I think Depp was more menacing as Bulger than Jack Nicholson’s similar character.

But it can’t be denied that Black Mass is the last good film that Johnny Depp starred in.

R24 He can still get roles but he would have to settle for roles playing older men or supporting roles. He could do indie films because he has more than enough money and could afford those risks. It seems he was mostly doing the cash cows like Pirates, Alice and Fantastic Beasts to fund not only his immediate family and kids but also his partying lifestyle and extravagant spending habits.

Johnny finally gets another potentially good movie role.

R20 AHEM.

RDJ was not really marketed as a heartthrob in his youth and he was not conventionally attractive compared to Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe and Keanu Reeves

People complain here about British actors taking American roles but probably are silent about an American from Kentucky taking the role of a French king.

‘Black Mass’ was barely seen or released. I've got to see it now, I'm fascinated by the subject.

No gay rumors or evidence of bisexuality. Likely 100% hetero. Booooring. His 80s twink self would have been so hot in a William Higgins porn.

R32, you wouldn't be the same person getting testy about the thought of an American buying an apartment in Paris, would you?

R35 I don't care myself but it's funny how some troll here gets pissed off about British and Australian playing American despite the fact acting is about pretending. Clearly Europeans do not give a shit if they let some hillbilly from Kentucky play a French monarch.

I wouldn't be so sure, R36. The French DL'er I'm thinking of will probably shit blood when he finds out.

They shot some of the movie in my city Lynn.

I’ve never watched it. I’ve actually never seen any of the movies shot in my city - Bruce Willis shot some of “Surrogates” in Downtown Lynn, Jennifer Lawrence shot “Joy” in some scenes in Lynn, Adam Sandler’s “That’s My Boy” had a scene shot on the street I lived on, and then there’s “Black Mass”.

Anyways, the movie is really inaccurate.

I hated how they left Debra Davis out. Debra Davis was the real life Elvira from Scarface. She’d have made a wonderful character for the fraus and gays, which I think was an element missing from the movie. The movie needed a Ginger McKenna, Elvira, Penelope from “Blow”. You gotta have some sugar and spice in these mafia films.

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Just watched this again recently. It’s a damn good movie.

Thread still holds true.

He's just signed to direct a feature produced by Al Pacino and he might be appeating in future "Fantastic Beasts" movies. That trial did him good.

*appearing

It’s a terrible movie and his performance was ridiculous. He looked like a cartoon character and acted the same

What makes it so terrible, R44?

I just watched it again last night and I think it’s a damn good movie. Johnny’s performance was solid.

I’m watching it again on Max. I love this movie.