#scott cooper

film list_

Scott Cooper

Cinematography by Masanobu Takayanagi

Johnny Depp’s cruel and icy portrayal of Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger is the best reason for seeing Black Mass. Otherwise there’s not enough heft and momentum to Scott Cooper’s film. It takes a fascinating story of the interrelationships between Bulger’s mob, the FBI, and the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and reduces it to a routine and often derivative gangster movie. Cooper and screenwriters Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth borrow shamelessly from GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) in a scene in which Bulger playfully terrorizes a colleague in the same way Joe Pesci’s character – “What do you mean, I’m funny?” – frightens Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill. The film is overloaded with good actors – Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnson, Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard, Jesse Plemons, Adam Scott, Julianne Nicholson – in parts that don’t give them enough to do. And while it was filmed in Boston, it misses the opportunity to capture the Boston neighborhood milieu in which Whitey, his politician brother Billy (Cumberbatch), and FBI agent John Connolly (Edgerton) grew up, something that was done to much better effect in films like Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, 2003), Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, 2007), and even Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant, 1997). Still, the cold menace projected by Depp’s Bulger is haunting, enhanced by the decision to provide the actor with ice-blue contact lenses that pierce through the shadows and give him an air of otherworldly surveillance.

2021

Jeff Bridges and Robert Duvall in Crazy Heart (Scott Cooper, 2009)