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Initial Thought: Oh man when I saw the trailer for this I knew it had to be a comeback for Johnny Depp. It looked intense, raw, and just plain intriguing. Not to mention that it has a pretty epic cast otherwise. I decided to check it out as soon as I could since it's in one of the theaters I get to go for free. I hope this is as good or better than it looks.
Characters/Acting: Of course we have Johnny Depp who looks like he is trying to be serious once again. It looks like it might work out for him. He is also surrounded by some pretty awesome actors like Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Peter Sarsgaard. There are even a few people here I didn't even know were in this. It's very weird seeing Benedict Cumberbatch when he plays Americans. He does it really well here and I definitely can see him as a politician. Johnny Depp is so haunting here. This is by far one of his disturbed characters. I say this is a true return to form from him. I really like Peter Sarsgaard and here he is quite different than his character from Pawn Sacrifice. He is always so much fun to watch. I've never really been a fan of Jesse Plemons, but I respect him for changing his lifestyle for the role. Joel Edgerton is amazing as usual. Kevin Bacon is alright here, but nothing amazing from him. I wish there was more Juno Temple here. Honestly even though this movie is starring Johnny Depp and is about Whitey Bulger this really seemed to be more about those around and not as much focused on him.
Story: The true story of Whitey Bulger, the brother of a state senator and the most infamous violent criminal in the history of South Boston, who became an FBI informant to take down a Mafia family invading his turf. So this is a bit slow moving, but whenever violence happens it is truly brutal and horrific. There are some pretty intense moments with dialogue too though. You really don't want to get on a guy like Whitey's bad side. I always enjoy the little facts they give about what happened to the real people after the events dramatized in these biographical films. I wonder why they did that shot like that at the end.
Directing/Writing: I have actually scene all of Scott Cooper's films so far. I didn't much care for Crazy Heart. It's most likely because I hate country music. It was directed well, but it just wasn't my type of film. Out of the Furnace though was pretty awesome. He also wrote both of those. For this film he takes solely works as a director. This is the writing debut for Mark Mallouk. Together he works with Jez Butterworth who worked on Edge of Tomorrow and Get on Up as well as the future Spectre. There is no way a man of such caliber could write a bad movie at least from what I've seen and expect. The filming is kind of strange it seems like a lot of it is done in snippets.
Final Thoughts: I thought this was a perfect film for October. This is simply for the fact that it is haunting for other reasons that gore horror. It's real crimes done by a real man. Anyways I thought this was quite good. The acting was great specifically from the man Johnny Depp. I would have liked to see the characters a bit more fleshed out than they were though. Either way this is a really good crime movie. I think it's definitely worth a watch. Also good on Johnny Depp for finally making a good choice among the many duds.
