The story of James "Whitey" Bulger should be ripe for a great picture. Here is a gangster who cut a deal with the F.B.I. to inform on his competitors so that he could build a criminal empire. When it all went to hell, he went on the lam and was on the F.B.I.'s Most Wanted list for years. They finally caught him in his 80's. You could probably make several features out of this material. Director Scott Cooper assembled an impressive cast led by Johnny Depp as Bulger to tell his version.

Unfortunately the story and screenplay of BLACK MASS is not nearly compelling as it should be. It is very repetitive. Someone crosses Bulger or he fears that they may have and he kills them. Some of that gets tiresome, even if it was true. Supposedly Cooper had a three hour cut at one point. He may have a better picture in there somewhere.

Once again, Johnny Depp has transformed himself for this role, but not in a crazy, over the top, cartoony way. The attempt is to look and sound like Bulger and he is very successful. You can't take your eyes off of Depp in BLACK MASS. And he is at the center of every great sequence in the picture.

Joel Edgerton as F.B.I. Agent John Connolly should have a great role to play. This is a lawman who literally makes a deal with the Devil so that he is essentially complicit in everything Bulger does. That should make for great drama. But it is not there on the page or in Edgerton's performance. You would expect Connolly to question what he has done or feel guilty, but he doesn't. Perhaps that is true of the real Connolly, but that doesn't make for great drama.

The rest of the supporting cast is mostly wasted. Some have their moments with Depp, but the writing is not strong enough for most of them to stand out. That's sad because the cast includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnson, Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard, Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, David Harbour, W. Earl Brown and Corey Stoll.

While uneven, BLACK MASS is full of great scenes and sequences including:

Bulger teaching life lessons to his son.

The hospital sequence.

Bulger picking up a prostitute (Juno Temple) from jail and questioning her.

A steak dinner with the boys.

Bulger checking up on his friend's wife (Julianne Nicholson).

The structure of the picture - going back and forth between the main storyline and future police interrogations of some of the principal characters didn't really add anything. I suppose it helped the filmmakers compress things. But the main problem here is the story and screenplay. It is simply not engaging enough. You go from a great sequence to something routine and not very compelling and you are never caught up in the narrative.

BLACK MASS is a flawed picture, but Depp's work as Bulger and some of the great scenes make it worth seeing. Scott Cooper is a talented filmmaker and has assembled great casts in all three of his features, CRAZY HEART, OUT OF THE FURNACE and here. CRAZY HEART was a fantastic debut, but the next two screenplays have been uneven. I hope that next time he has a screenplay worthy of his and their talent.