It should be noted that while Jack Nicholson's gangster was modeled after Bulger, the film itself is a remake of the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs and not a straightforward chronicling of the Bulger/FBI saga. Speaking of Scorsese, much has been made (arguably too much so) of his film The Departed basically being the Whitey Bulger tale. While the film indulges in a few Scorsese-esque flourishes at times (seriously, there needs to be a moratorium on the use of Rolling Stones songs in non-Scorsese gangster movies), Black Mass is closer in spirit, look, and feel to a Sidney Lumet film (particularly the late director's corrupt cop films Prince of the City, Q&A, and Night Falls on Manhattan). As directed by Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace), Black Mass - adapted from the book by two Boston Globe reporters who helped expose the Bureau's devil's deal with Bulger - is a grim, tense character study that would be a requiem were it any darker and serious. However the deal worked, Bulger admits to being in bed with the FBI, who via Connolly and his colleague, Agent John Morris (David Harbour), allowed Whitey to run amok in Boston for twenty years, getting away with drug trafficking, extortion, and murders along the way. To this day, Bulger claims he only paid the FBI for information and that it was a one-sided relationship. And for two decades, from roughly 1975-95, the plan worked, especially in Whitey's favor as he rises to become the crime boss of Boston with the FBI having eliminated his Italian rivals. But Bulger, with Connolly's prodding, comes to view it as a business arrangement rather than informing, a chance for him to have the FBI eliminate his competition while simultaneously protecting him from law enforcement. For Bulger and other mobsters, being a rat is the lowest of the low and the penalty is a gruesome death (which we see Whitey mete out).
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