![]() ![]() business card to pass along to his older brother. Nevertheless, during an increasingly stilted lunch conversation, Connolly asks about Jimmy and offers Billy his F.B.I. Billy laughs as the two compliment each other on their success and marvel at how far they have come. Early in the film he congratulates Billy Bulger on becoming a senator and questions whether he should call his childhood friend Billy or “sir”. golden boy, a hero who returns home to clean up the rough streets where he grew up. Along the way, his own business is protected and, over time, can claim turf from fallen foes.Ĭonnolly begins the film as an F.B.I. Bulger protests that he has not become what he hates, “a rat”, and as everyone is quick to note, Jimmy metes out merciless retribution to rats discovered within his circle of friends or business associates.īulger instead sees his relationship with Connolly as “business” - the F.B.I., with Bulger’s occasional tip, can rid Boston of Bulger’s rivals. ![]() In this film, Jimmy Bulger is not only a crime boss who branches out from South Boston to Miami as he expands his business from drugs and extortion (with increasingly frequent murders) to gambling on jai alai. These three characters especially well illustrate director Scott Cooper’s and screenwriters Mark Mallouk’s and Jez Butterworth’s vision for this film: the shifting loyalties among powerful insiders and outsiders and the blurred lines between public and private lives. He must balance his role as a tough state leader with that of a loving brother. Billy has served as president of the Massachusetts Senate for 18 years and, later, president of the University of Massachusetts. So, too, albeit in much less screen time, does Jimmy’s younger brother, Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch). to help save Boston from organized crime. And just like on the playground, it wasn’t always easy to tell who’s who.” John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) in particular struggles to maintain a line between his childhood loyalty to Jimmy Bulger, who once saved him from a beating by neighborhood bullies, and his duty to the F.B.I. all he knows about Jimmy (Whitey) Bulger (Johnny Depp) and the Winter Hill Gang, he summarizes the theme of Black Mass: “Southie kids, we went straight from playing cops and robbers on the playground to doing it for real in the streets. When Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons) begins to reveal to the F.B.I. ![]()
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