Christopher Lawrence is the movie critic for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
clawrence@reviewjournal.com … @life_onthecouch on Twitter. 702-380-4567
Not long into “Black Mass,” director Scott Cooper’s grim tale of Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger and his dealings with the FBI, I started trying to guess the fate of each new character as part of a game I called “Whacked or Not Whacked.” Spoiler alert: The result was usually Whacked.
Movie has assembled one of the most likable casts in recent memory. But it’s awfully easy to get distracted as actor after actor from some of the past decade’s buzziest TV shows turns up in thinly drawn roles.
During the annual 12-hour nightmare known as The Purge, virtually every crime known to man is legal.
Here’s a look at this week’s new movies, half of which have ties to Las Vegas:
Jude Law is barely recognizable as the magnificently bearded title character — picture Fisher Stevens replacing Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” — a paunchy, bellowing, red-faced embodiment of hypertension.
It’s hard to quantify “Transcendence” as a success. It’s a good popcorn movie, but it’s never as smart as it needs to be.
