The "Black Mass" is James "Whitey" Bulger's Soul – Assuming He Has One

Rating: 8/10 (24 September 2015)

Although this time we have an Irish-American gangster protagonist instead of the time-worn Italian-American one, "Black Mass" (hereafter BM) follows the usual rise and fall trajectory of all organized crime movies. However, what distinguishes BM from a lot of these "Crime Really Doesn't Pay" movies is actor Johnny- Depp's career-zenith performance as that Irish-American gangster protagonist James "Whitey" Bulger. Most gangster movies manage to find a smidgen of tenderness and caring in their mob boss heroes. In BM, that humanity is just about missing. With his slicked-back white hair, cold blue eyes, and stone-faced sneer, Depp's Bulger seems to be pure, implacable, death-warmed-over evil with no soul at all, or at best a black chunk of coal for a soul.
During the mid 70's, Bulger and his "Winter Hill Gang" consisting of his lieutenant, unshaven and uncouth Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi (Rory Cochrane), newbie Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons), and equally poker-faced and sloppy peanut-eating hit-man Johnny Martorano (W. Earl Brown) hold sway over South Boston (or South End or Southie). Bulger took care never to let the public see him rub out his enemies (advice he humorously but chillingly gives his young son, Douglas). Bulger justifies these tactics as necessary to "protect" Southie from the ambitious mafia-backed North Boston (North End) Italian-American Angiulo Brothers. Of course, it's just a turf war. In this war, Whitey seems to have the edge because he doesn't hesitate to kill not only people who mess with him or betray him, but also people he just SUSPECTS of doing the same. For example, late in the film Bulger strangles Flemmi's prostitute stepdaughter for talking to the cops, even though she swears she didn't squeal on him.
Whitey Bulger is not the only one who wants to take out the Angiulo Brothers. A Southie native son, FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) returns home because he is eager to rise in the ranks and thinks that icing the elusive Angiulo Brothers is the way to do it. Thinking Bulger has the "connections" to bring them down, Connolly wants Bulger to inform on them to the FBI. Even though Bulger's twisted sense of crime and Irish ethnic loyalty makes him initially refuse Connolly's offer, Connolly craftily appeals to that same loyalty to convince Bulger that being an FBI "snitch" is the only way to get rid of the Angiulos.
Slowly and eventually, Connolly realizes that he may have made a deal with a real devil. Bulger blithely and savagely refuses to heed Connolly's warning not to commit crimes and/or kill as he keeps tabs on the Angiulos. On the contrary, Bulger coolly exploits this unholy alliance with the FBI to expand his influence not only in Southie, but even in Miami in a World Jai Alai embezzlement scheme, and as far as Ireland in an IRA (Irish Republican Army) weapons- smuggling operation. Only after Connolly's FBI boss, the demanding Charles McGuire (Kevin Bacon) rides him, and Connolly in turn rides Bulger does he finally get photographic evidence of the Angiulos' criminal haunts, which allows the FBI to nail the brothers through a wiretap.
Bulger seems to have it made. His main opponents are out of the picture. His senator brother William Bulger (Benedict Cumberbatch) stays willfully ignorant about Whitey's activities. Helping capture Anguilo should keep the FBI looking the other way. But fate steps in as she always does. Bulger's fragile family life collapses as his son Douglas suffers Reye syndrome, goes into a coma and dies when his mom and Bulger's girlfriend Lindsey (Dakota Johnson) pulls the plug on him despite Whitey's raging opposition. She leave Whitey soon after. Bulger also acts irrationally and threateningly towards Connolly's FBI partner John Morris (David Harbour) in a "GoodFellas"-inspired "tell me the recipe" scene, and in an unbearably tense bedroom scene with Connolly's wife Marianne (Julianne Nicholson). Even though Connolly is still in Bulger's corner, Marianne finally gets fed up with his slimy association and locks him out of the house.
The beginning of the end comes for Connolly in the form of blunt, all-business prosecutor Fred Wyshak (Corey Stoll), who takes over the U.S. Attorney's Office and brusquely refuses Connolly's bribe of Red Sox tickets and basically tells him to stop his bullsh-t connection with Whitey and bring him in. When undercover agent John McIntyre (Brad Carter) blows the lid on the IRA operation, Bulger kills and buries him. Wyshak also learns the "assistance" Whitey provided to capture the Angiulo Brothers actually came second-hand from lower-rank informants. In return for immunity, Morris confesses the true relationship that Connolly and Whitey had. When The Boston Globe exposes Whitey's informant activities, the jig is up as the Winter Hill Gang abandons Whitey as a traitor, is arrested, and brings the movie full circle to their taped confessions. Connolly is arrested as well for his conspiratorial crimes. In the epilogue, Whitey becomes a 16-year fugitive, eventually captured by the FBI in 2011.
Though cruising over familiar gangster ground, BM is a smoothly-paced, never-boring, and actually unnerving portrait of an unconventional, psychopathic criminal who achieves his murderous ends not so much through flamboyant anger (though Bulger does lose it from time to time) as through inhuman, selfish, enigmatic, unadulterated evil. Even when he is being "nice", like to his son or mother, it's creepy and foreboding. Again, Depp redeems himself after five movie flops to give an Oscar-caliber performance as a soulless guy that seems to have come straight out of hell. Joel Edgerton nearly steals the spotlight from Depp as the unscrupulous agent Connolly who justifies selling HIS soul by touting his Irish-based loyalty and friendship with Bulger and the old adage "it takes a thief to catch a thief ". Despite Depp's tour-de-force performance, BM makes me wish for a movie prequel detailing Bulger's young, formative years and the events that led to his criminal career, including stints at Leavenworth and Alcatraz. After all, no one is born evil, right?
Right?