This might sound harsh, but if you look at the cold hard facts, then only three of Johnny Depp‘s last sixteen movies dating back to infamous box office bomb The Lone Ranger can be viewed as an unqualified success, with the rest all disappointing on some level.
Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, Rob Marshall’s Into the Woods and Scott Cooper’s Black Mass all did solid critical and commercial business, but the rest of the actor’s output has largely served to underwhelm. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell no Tales and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald both turned a profit, but their respective hauls left Disney and Warner Bros. immensely dissatisfied, while reviews weren’t kind, either.
Transcendence, Mortdecai and Alice Through the Looking Glass all bombed hard, while Sherlock Gnomes and the Kevin Smith duo of Tusk and Yoga Hosers suffered from a largely negative reception, and The Professor and Waiting for Barbarians were shuffled onto VOD to almost no fanfare and muted reviews.
Despite spending years sitting on the shelf, though, Johnny Depp‘s latest thriller City of Lies has been posting a surprisingly strong showing on streaming, to the extent that it’s currently the most popular movie to rent or buy on iTunes. The true-life crime tale revolving around the deaths of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. was filmed back in 2016 but only made its way onto VOD last month, and it seems that the actor’s supporters and those with an interest in the unsolved murders of the rap icons are clearly willing to check it out. It’s far from a perfect movie, but it’s an enjoyable ride throughout with a strong performance from the former Hollywood A-lister.
