Review: Black Mass

There are a couple of premises on which Black Mass relies in lieu of a unique selling point. One is the idea, mainly established by marketing over the years, that a radical physical transformation for a role equals a daring and probably great performance. The other is that the audience's familiarity with the structure of the real-life gangster movie is enough to justify doing it all over again. Both are fallacies, and neither is enough to make it sparkle.