Four stars

Scott Cooper’s crime drama about the notorious Boston gangster Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger will come as an exhilarating surprise to anyone who feared Johnny Depp was never going to surface again from the bilge of Pirates as an actor of note. After several misfires, from The Tourist to The Lone Ranger, consider this a blistering comeback from the Edward Scissorhands star. 

Depp dons the blue contact lenses, shades, and hair oil to play the  hoodlum who got his hooks into the FBI. For its part, the agency thought it was getting an invaluable ally and informant in the war against the Mafia in Boston in the Seventies and Eighties. Bulger had other ideas, using his connections with one agent in particular to build a criminal empire under the noses of the federal government. 

Courtesy of The Departed, The Town and several other pictures, South Boston, “Southie” to the cognoscenti, is becoming almost as familiar a cinematic territory as the Mafia dominated Manhattan of the Seventies.  True to form, everything is present and correct here, from the drawling accents to the swaggering attitudes, and occasionally the schtick veers close to cliche. It would be only too easy here to go OTT with the period and characters, but only Joel Edgerton, playing FBI agent John Connolly, is disappointingly unwise enough to succumb to temptation. 

The rest of the cast, Depp in particular, keeps his portrait of a criminal psychopath low key for the most part. In consequence, when the bursts of violence come they are savage and shocking enough to take the breath away. It is Depp, indeed, who elevates Cooper’s drama above just another crime biopic. Benedict Cumberbatch is another class act as Whitey’s politician brother. And yes, this most English of actors also has the Southie accent nailed.