Film Review: Black Mass (2015)

If Black Mass was a pizza it would only have one topping; if it was a car it would be a base model Toyota Corolla; and if it was a day of the week it would be Wednesday. Black Mass is the blandest gangster film that's ever been made. It's not dull, it's not bad, but it leaves absolutely no impression on your cinematic palate. The film tells the true story of Whitey Bulger, a small-time Boston gangster who became a big-time gangster in the 1980s thanks to the tacit support of the FBI, who were relying on Bulger to give them intel on Boston's sole mafia family. Bulger gave them very little real info, but the protection and tips he got from the FBI (and one agent in particular) let him rule Boston's underworld for more than a decade.

Where Black Mass goes wrong is in concentrating on the FBI's involvement with Bulger. It's true that this is what makes the Bulger case of news interest, but it has very little cinematic value. The appeal of gangster films lies in the gangster lifestyle. Goodfellas is a masterpiece because it shows the visceral appeal of life in the mob, especially how that life was for street-level hoods. The Godfather also shows us a gangster lifestyle, albeit one that's built around an operatic plot and an acidic attack on the myth of the American Dream. Black Mass goes through the motions of showing Bulger whacking some people, beating up others, and generally being feral and threatening, but we don't get any clear idea of what his criminal empire was built on. His downfall began with his involvement with jai alai games in Florida. The film does a terrible job of telling us what jai alai is and how Bulger profits from it. And Bulger's underlings are barely developed. We register their presence, but they might as well be nameless extras for all the impact they have. Instead of describing the gangster life, the film gives us scene after scene of guys sitting around tables in homes and offices doing nothing but talk, talk, talk. At the halfway point in the film I began to feel I was watching some kind of dramatic re-enactment show on the History Channel.

The actors all turn in capable performances, but they're held back by a script that lacks wit and energy. All the salient points in Bulger's career are covered, which is fine for an essay, but not so charming in a film. And one odd thing I noticed is that either the actors or the scriptwriter have no ear for swearing. Everyone curses up a storm, but it always sounds awkward and forced. Goodfellas evidently holds the record for sweariest film of all time but in that film the expletives felt natural and almost poetic. In Black Mass the curses are there to enliven otherwise dreary dialogue sequences.

Film Review: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

How bad is The Wolf of Wall Street? The only thing separating it from being another installment in the Jackass film franchise is the omission of Johnny Knoxville from the cast. Wolf and Jackass are both about men behaving badly, lewdly and stupidly, but at least Jackass isn't pretending that it's making a statement about its times.

Wolf could also be described as the final act in Martin Scorsese's trilogy about the ugly, dangerous face of street-level American capitalism. Goodfellas was the first in the trio and is probably Scorsese's masterwork. Casino was next and felt like a windier, less-focused version of Goodfellas. Wolf represents a collapse in Scorsese's artistic vision. All the elements that worked so well in the previous films--narration by the lead character, great period detail, clever integration of pop songs in the soundtrack--have been trotted out once again, but this time it all feels like it's being done by a hack director.

Both Goodfellas and Casino struck a balance between showing us the inner workings of their secretive, dangerous worlds and the lives of excess lived by the major players in those worlds. Wolf can't be bothered to adequately describe the whys and wherefores of Wall Street in the 1980s. Jordan Belfort, the title character, is quickly introduced, a vague description is given of how his penny stock scam works, and from there we're beaten over the head with scenes and sub-plots that hammer home the point that the Excessive Eighties were fueled by coke, sex and bravura displays of testosterone. In the third act the FBI catches up with Belfort, but this section of the film is even more opaque than the beginning. Why the FBI is on to him isn't really explained, nor are the exact nature of his crimes properly explained. Perhaps this is because financial crimes are basically dry and dull, but what it is clear is that Scorsese only made this film to spend more than two hours showing just how depraved men with too much money can become.

At different points in Wolf it feels like the film has been made by either a horny fifteen-year-old boy or a dirty old man. Scorsese has so much goodwill banked with critics by this point that I don't think many of them have dared to point out that this is a wildly sexist and exploitative film, almost like something Roger Corman would have produced back in the '70s when he hired Scorsese to direct Boxcar Bertha, a bloody, sexy ripoff of the Bonnie and Clyde story. Scorsese is fixated on the fact that Belfort and his minions were sex-obsessed. It's certainly worth pointing out the psychological connection between sex and money, but Scorsese makes the point over and over and over and over, until finally the audience gets the icky feeling that the film is saying more about the director than it is about Jordan Belfort; I mean, how is it that a film about Wall Street has far more sex and nudity in it than Boogie Nights, a film about the hardcore porn industry? The nadir of all this excess is a scene in which Jordan's trophy wife taunts him by displaying her genitals while telling him that he's not going to be getting any because she's mad at him. Unbeknownst to her, a security camera is trained on the room they're in, and some guards are getting a free show, a fact which Jordan gleefully points out. It's a pointless scene that only seems to have been included to provide a raunchy thrill for the male portion of the audience, and there are probably four or five similar scenes that are equally gratuitous.

The worst thing about Wolf is that Scorsese has nothing to say about his subject. He takes an uncritical, even affectionate look at the character of Belfort, and his view of Wall Street in the Eighties amounts to nothing more than delighted astonishment at all the naughtiness that went on. If they were victims of this era, financial or otherwise, Scorsese has nothing to say about them. Based on this film, I'm afraid it might be time for Martin to retire his director's chair and stick to doing DVD commentaries on other people's films; Porky's and Confessions of a Plumber's Mate are just a couple of titles he might be interested in analyzing.

Film Review: American Hustle (2013)

That American Hustle is being showered with accolades I can only attribute to the fact that the film leaves critics with a stark choice: call it the thunderingly dull turkey that it is, or knuckle under to the film's overblown, badly-written characters and its witless fascination with Seventies decor and fashion. Most critics have opted to go with the herd and applaud the film, possibly leery that they might be accused of not being able to appreciate director David O. Russell's ironic look at the con men and women who are often at the heart of the American Dream.

It's difficult to pick out the worst aspect of this film, but I think I'll put my money on the characters. The five main characters are resolutely dull, witless and shallow. The same could be said about a lot of the characters in Boogie Nights, another Seventies-themed film, but the huge difference is that the latter film actually likes and respects its characters, and works to make us feel the same way. Russell has no respect for his characters. He's laughing at them and wants us join in on the laughter by making them look and sound as ridiculous as possible. Bad hair! Wide lapels! Disco! Oh, the horror and hilarity! Every character, with the possible exception of Jeremy Renner's, is in the film to be mocked. Their ambitions, their beliefs, their lifestyles, everything about them is either sneered at or openly ridiculed. And yet this isn't a comedy. I saw it in a crowded cinema and you could have heard a pin drop throughout; no laughs, no giggles, maybe a few chuckles here and there. You really have to wonder what Russell's purpose was in making this film because its entertainment value is zero.

The plot is a shambolic retelling of the Abscam scandal, but most of the script is taken up with the dreary personal relationships and romantic entanglements of the main characters. This is where the acting might have saved the film, but, alas, not this time. There's some seriously bad acting going on here. Bradley Cooper and Amy Adams seem to think they're appearing in a telenovela, and Christian Bale casts a soporific pall over the film with his thick, chewy Bronx accent and sluggish...line...readings. Jennifer Lawrence emerges with her honour intact despite being lumbered with some of the worst dialogue, and Robert De Niro appears briefly to show everyone what a real pro can do. Unfortunately for Russell, De Niro's presence only reminds us that American Hustle is basically a ripoff of Goodfellas. In fact, if I was Martin Scorsese I'd be suing for plagiarism. Or maybe not. I wouldn't want people thinking that anything this bad could have been inspired by my film.