Black Mass

Black Mass (2015) is about a Boston mob boss becoming an FBI informant, and it happened. James Bulger runs a small crew in the seventies. His childhood friend John Connolly returns to Boston as an FBI agent and makes him an offer: give us the Italian mafia and we will protect you. The arrangement works. The Italian family collapses and Bulger takes the space. Because the FBI protects him the police cannot touch him; every report about him sits on Connolly's desk. He grows for twenty years. The real subject is not Bulger but the institution. Connolly builds his career on the relationship and at some point which side he is on becomes unclear. His superiors like the results and do not ask. The real Bulger was tipped off about his arrest in 1994 and disappeared, staying a fugitive for sixteen years; he was caught in California in 2011. Johnny Depp was made unrecognisable for the part, with blue lenses and an altered hairline and teeth. Joel Edgerton plays Connolly and is the film's real centre. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Bulger's brother, who was president of the Massachusetts senate, and that is true as well. Scott Cooper directed. A scene at a dinner table is the most tense passage and contains no violence at all. It runs 123 minutes. Good for: mob films, true events, and performance. Less good for: the violence is sudden and harsh, and the plot jumps quickly across years.