Never saw a movie like this

Rating: 10/10 (25 June 2011)

It's not a true story. Or is it? With the recent arrest of Whitey Bulger, who was reportedly a partial role model for Frank Costello, the Jack Nicholson character, the movie comes back to life as a testimony to recent historical events. What amazes me is how deeply I was drawn in to what is supposedly a fictional story. If these characters are made up, the screenwriter is, well, actually better than Shakespeare. That, or he knows the place, Southie, so well its molecules ooze out of his skin and just telling what he knows. The placement of literary devices, betrayal, suspicion, tension ratcheting scenes is so precise, so well planned you have to cancel all your calls for the afternoon. It's ridiculous. Never saw a movie so tightly planned, so well played, so unforgivingly methodical in its creation of character. The actors, of course, deserve credit. But hey, they're reciting lines written by the writer.