Skip "Black Mass" and See "Whitey: The United States v. James J. Bulger" Instead

Whitey: The United States of America vs James J. Bulger (2014)

Rated R

Directed by Joe Berlinger

The Story:

Go behind the headlines as the United States tries to take down James "Whitey" Bulger once and for all.

The meandering mess that was Black Mass sort of steamrolls over this documentary which is better fleshed out and more compelling than the fictional accounts.

Berlinger approaches the story from the angles of the victims, friends and families of the victims, and the officials who tried to prove once and for all whether Bulger was a mobster or an informant or both.

Seeing this shortly after the Depp version, a lot of the wind was taken out of the sales on this one.

It's still a good documentary, don't get me wrong.

It simply won't rank on my best of the year finale, and I can't pinpoint if it was due to watching the two so close together, so I hate faulting a film for coming second on my depth chart even though it was released years earlier and I simply missed it.

That said, like Making A Murderer, it's amazing to see how much law enforcement, in this case the FBI will indeed cover up their own tracks to hide something.

In this case, they take a look at Top Informant files of other notorious gangsters and compare those thousands of pages files, often with multiple volumes, to the meager few hundred pages on Bulger.

Things definitely don't add up.

To Whitey's defense, he adamantly insists that while he may be many things, and could be guilty of just about everything...

He's not a rat.

It's all about semantics with that man, and in a bizarre way, you can almost respect him for that.

So if you want a nice crime documentary in the near future, give this one a whirl.

Currently streaming on Netflix as of this writing.

Final Grade: B-

Truth Is More Boring Than Fiction..."Black Mass"

Black Mass (2015)

Rated R

Starring Johnny Depp, Benedict Cumberbatch, Joel Edgerton, Dakota Johnson, Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard, Adam Scott,

Directed by Scott Cooper

The Story:

Based on the true story of James "Whitey" Bulger (Depp), this drama attempts to show how devious he was by ensnaring FBI Agent John Connolly (Edgerton) into making him an informant for the FBI which then gave him carte blanche to do as he pleased in the criminal underworld of Boston. Meanwhile his brother Billy (Cumberbatch) was a respected politician that helped his brother enough, but not to the point of being in the same spotlight with him.

Here you have a 2 hour drama that felt like 12 hours of your life slipped by.

Excruciatingly dull, this is a mafia drama with really, very little drama.

All we see are members of Bulger's gang confessing to this that or the other via flashbacks.

It turns out that Bulger's informant status may very have been completely fabricated by John Connolly. Bulger never ratted on anyone, a fact he holds very strongly too today. Connolly simply used testimony from other snitches to create Bulger's file.

The cast itself is a remarkable assemblage of talent. The sad part is, they are given very little to do.

Cumberbatch seems wasted in what is essentially a glorified cameo. That part could have been given to just about anyone and carried the same gravitas to the role.

Kevin Bacon seems to give the most passionate performance, too bad his screen time is likely 5 minutes or less.

I may have mocked Depp in the past for only playing the same character (Captain Jack) for the last 15 years or so, but when given a role like this...

Perhaps Captain Jack is him actually acting and doing a pretty good job, because he is stale, wooden and rather boring in this role. Of course, I have to go all the way back to Edward Scissorhands to find a Johnny Depp role I did like, so take it with a grain of salt.

:)

There is little passion, energy or excitement throughout the movie. There doesn't feel like escalating tension that Bulger is just getting away with things or people are becoming suspicious that Connolly may be helping Bulger out.

I'll give this one a "D" for disappointment.

Final Grade: D+