Boston criminal psychopath exploits FBI connection

Rating: 8/10 (19 September 2015)

As the title suggests, Black Mass exercises a Satanic evil — in a character paradoxically named Whitey.
Like the real-life character, this Whitey Bulger is a killer with reptilian charm whose psychopathology goes far beyond the proffered explanation of LSD experiments at Alcatraz. He's driven to build and secure a criminal empire but relishes torture for its own sake.
While Bulger is careful not to be seen taking a satchel of money, we see him strangle and shoot people. He has a limited fastidiousness. The genre usually has the boss delegate such hands-on work. These graphic scenes connect Whitey to his crimes, even as he's coldly detached from any emotional connections other than his mother and son, who both die early. Even when he offers his young son guidance it's on how to get away with violence not to eschew it.
Whitey hates rats but he can rationalize turning informer for the FBI. it's a business arrangement, by which the feds will help the Irish gang boss wipe out his rival Mafiosa.
The film's central theme is the antithesis of connections and "pulling the plug." That phrase recurs. Whitey implicitly pulls the plug on his girlfriend when she explicitly says she'd pull the plug on their brain-dead son.
There's a constant tension between a character's respecting his bond and breaking it. Hence the narrative's structure, reminiscences by his gunsels turning state's witness against him. So, too, Whitey's frequent strategy of pretending to forgive and accept someone immediately before killing him/her.
There's a wide range of connections here. Whitey's brother is a leading state politician who steers completely clear of Whitey's criminal life. But he has to resign from his university chancellorship when he's found to have been in contact with the fugitive Whitey. In that fraternal connection, he failed to pull the plug completely enough.
The third of these childhood friends is FBI agent John Connolly, who uses his old connection to enlist Whitey as informer. For failing to pull the plug he goes down. So does fellow agent John Morris, who moves from tentative conspirator to terrified. Typical of Satanic evil, Buiger has a seductive pull that enables a rationalization of justice to gloss the self-interest. The dapper suit, gold watch and new-found swagger are but signs of Connolly's corruption by his fidelity to his old friend.
The Bulger boys' mother loves both, obviously, and may or may not be guilty of cheating Whitey at gin. But Connolly's wife pulls the plug on their marriage when she's exposed to Whitey's insinuating evil unmasked. As described above, Whitey pulls the plug on his relationship before his girlfriend does.
Whitey and Connolly — but not Whitey's legit brother — make a big deal out of their old friendship and their connection to the neighbourhood. Here loyalty covers a multitude of sins and moral compromise. So, too, Whitey's brief service to the IRA's cause, an extension of his role of Irish warrior against the Italian gang, the South Side of Boston against the North. Where you're from is a much-touted bond, to compel loyalty, but the truly moral will pull that plug when virtue requires.
Gunsel Steven is connected to his girlfriend's daughter but overextends that connection in their sexual relationship. When the cops probe her connection to Whitey's gang he strangles her. When Whitey turns against Morris for revealing his family's secret marinade recipe, he demonstrates the sinister danger in any connection to such evil. The scene ends with Whitey's even more chilling violation of Connolly's wife. The only healthy character in the house, she pleads illness.
There are two humorous replays of the theme. An end credit promises no profits have resulted from the film's use of cigarettes. That is, nothing is connected to the smoke. And the film's most senior law officer is played by Kevin Bacon, mister six degrees of separation/connection himself.
Obviously the film's subject goes beyond Whitey Bulger to America's knotted and inextricable binding of good and evil, the criminal and the law. One hand washes the other. The film derives not just out of the gangster genre but out of the even more characteristic American tradition, the Western. There American civilization is rooted in the gun and the noose. Gunmen brought "civilization" to the wilds and gunmen secure their families and relationships in the urban jungle.
These days that paradox extends even further, to the international tyrants that America befriends and supports in its own thus morally compromised interests. Hello Saudis and Iran. Goodbye, naive confidence in any easy honour.