Black Mass

Plot Summary

Whitey Bulger holds away in South Boston, in an area known as 'Southie' It's a tough part of town and not even the cops will dare upset or disturb the activities of the various mobsters who rule the city streets. Depp is wily, ruthless and cunning. But he also has a softer side. He takes care of his kid, who he dotes on, and doesn't involve his family in his work. They know what he does, but are willing to look the other way. Whitey gets a message from a corrupt cop one day, telling him that he needs to be careful as a rival gang is after him.

After this, he meets his friend John Connolly and agrees albeit reluctantly to become an informer for the FBI and in return, will receive a degree of protection in the sense that he will not be busted.

Whitey’s little son does one day and he is devastated as a result. However, he agrees to go ahead with the deal he made with Connolly, because of the bond that they have due to friendship. At the start of “Black Mass,” Whitey Bulger and his Winter Hill Gang are barely even on the FBI’s radar. Says Cooper, “As we enter the film, the Italian Mafia, centered in the North End of Boston, are the real power players. Bulger and his Irish-American Winter Hill Gang are small-time racketeers and loan sharks with maybe the occasional murder, but it’s Gennaro Angiulo and his soldiers who are running organized crime in the city. When Connolly moves back up to Boston, he understands that in order to rise to the top ranks of the FBI’s Boston office, he needs to bring down the Cosa Nostra. And to do that, he needs Whitey Bulger. Connolly believes Whitey could be a wealth of valuable intel. However, he’s also an extremely dangerous man, so the FBI is wary about allowing Connolly to use him as an informant.”

Evoking the adage that there is honor among thieves, Johnny Depp contends, “First and foremost, Jimmy Bulger is—in his own mind and his own heart—a man of honor. His immediate response to Connolly is that he would never be a rat. He’s not going to rat on his own people, for nobody, for nothing. But helping the FBI get the Italian Mafia is a business decision that, without question, works for him. I mean, if you’re offered that kind of clemency, you’re going to take it, and he takes it and runs with it. He ends up giving the FBI very little and gets a lot in return, so it’s kind of brilliant on his part.”

Connolly has already been seduced by success and the rewards that come with it, so, in his mind, the ends justify whatever means are necessary. Edgerton surmises, “I think John wants to be celebrated and admired by everybody. But unfortunately that takes him to some dark places. John becomes so enmeshed with Jimmy that he doesn’t realize how deep he’s gone, how dangerous the landscape has become, and how irretrievable his conscience is. His whole life becomes dismantled by this obsessive relationship and by this need to be constantly affirmed by a criminal.”

Unlike McGuire, another of Connolly’s superiors, Special Agent John Morris, allows his better judgment to be clouded by the dogged resolve of John Connolly and the deceptive charm of Whitey Bulger. David Harbour, who appears as Morris, says, “Connolly is very sure of himself and gets what he wants done, and Morris admires that. Early on, you see that Connolly is very gung-ho about Bulger as an informant and he convinces Morris. However, there comes a point where they cross the line and start socializing with these gangsters, and Morris is compromising his career and his future to impress this guy. Whitey Bulger can be very gracious one minute and then turn on a dime, and he does that to Morris. That’s when the reality of the situation hits him and the clock starts ticking.” In fact, the sands begin to shift with the new arrival of an incorruptible federal prosecutor named Fred Wyshak. Played by Corey Stoll, Wyshak is unimpressed by Connolly’s attempt to glad-hand him with Red Sox tickets and can’t be dissuaded by the agent’s double talk about his lead informant: Whitey Bulger.

Marianne Connolly starts to see another side of her husband, John, as he becomes more entangled with Whitey. Cast as Marianne, Julianne Nicholson asserts, “Marianne is seeing a lot less of her husband and when he’s home, she notices how much he’s changing: he’s wearing flashy watches and fancy suits and even carries himself in a different way. It’s basically like he’s buying his own hype and becoming somebody else. That’s not what she signed on for, so they grow apart.”

In the end Connolly, Whitey and even Whitey's brother are brought to book, thus proving that no one is ahead of the long arm of the law.