Venice Review: 'Black Mass' Starring Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnson, More

A shifty-looking guy in '70s duds sits in a parked car, window open, reading a paper. A motorcyclist pulls up beside him and, before Shifty can even fully finish his inevitable "What the fuck..?" shoots him in the head. This is the scene from Scott Cooper's "Black Mass" where the immense familiarity of the entire endeavor may strike you, but not because we've all seen played out several times before — here you might notice what is missing, what is, for want of a better word, wrong. The generally strong score (by "Mad Max: Fury Road" composer Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL) lies over the quick cutaway moment, heavy and foreboding and ominous. Somehow, it just feels like that should have been cut to, I don't know, the Rolling Stones or a swingy number by Dean Martin maybe? Cooper's take on the gangster picture is so deeply beholden to great films that have gone before that you might find yourself mentally "correcting" it like a term paper, as...