Being toted as the film that’ll resurrect Johnny Depp’s stillbirth of an acting career and definitely the first film of the season that looks like it’s trying to make its way towards the Academy Awards (you know that look — sleek, semi-biographical, big famous names flashing across the screen in impact font throughout the commercials), as of 2 days after its release Black Mass has already ticked off the real Whitey Bulger as well as some of his…ahem, “associates.” The film’s got a “Certified Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a solid 77%, what is there to be pissy about?
According to Whitey Bulger (through his defense attorney of course), for one thing the star of the film completely missed the mark — yep, that scary lookin’ version of Johnny Depp we’ve got running around on-screen is apparently a shallow adaptation to who Whitey really is. Via People,
“Johnny Depp might as well have been playing the Mad Hatter all over again as far as James Bulger is concerned,” Brennan says. “Hollywood greed is behind the rush to portray my client, and the movie missed the real scourge created in my client’s case, the real menace to Boston during that time and in other mob cases around the country – the federal government’s complicity in each and every one of those murders with the top echelon informant program.”
Bulger, now 86, refused to meet or even correspond with Depp, and has no plans to watch the film, even if it ever becomes one of the films piped into the maximum security federal prison in Florida where he is serving two life sentences, Brennan says.
I mean, dude, come on — it’s a Hollywood movie. Were you expecting a legit biography straight from the History Channel? John Nash from A Beautiful Mind was also anti-Semitic and homosexual on occasion but they didn’t put THAT in the movie. You know why? Because that’s not fun. What IS fun is watching people shoot each other and crime bosses and gangs and pew pew pew FBI waddupppp.
Note: I haven’t seen Black Mass — but judging from the commercials I’m like 90% sure I just summarized the core of the film.
As for Bulger’s associates, well, a past associate of his named Kevin Weeks isn’t so happy about the fact that his character “looks like a knuckle-dragging moron…I look like I have Down syndrome.”
Notice how nowhere in that statement Week’s says that he is, in fact NOT a knuckle-dragging moron. This would lead me to believe that he’s just upset someone actually took note of the fact that he walks around like a gorilla with his hands in dirt and decided to put it on film. Via The Daily Beast,
According to Weeks, the filmmakers behind Black Mass “didn’t consult with anyone within the inner circle about the movie,” and as a result, there are major discrepancies between what really happened and what happens onscreen.
“… In all the years I was with that man, he never swore at me once. We never yelled at each other. The opening scene of me getting beaten up? That never happened. They also have me talking to a black FBI agent in the beginning of the film, but I wouldn’t talk to the FBI. I spoke to a DEA agent, Dan Doherty. And my cooperation came after Johnny Martorano started cooperating. Nothing in the film is chronological, really.”
Well no shit, what’s an action / crime film without people yelling at beating each other up? It’s probably a good thing Whitey & Friends were never consulted on the making of Black Mass –people don’t go to the movies for accuracy, they go for entertainment and overpriced popcorn that’s been sitting in the popper all day. Nothing more, nothing less.
[Via The Daily Beast & People]