Film

Black Mass

Name: Black Mass
Genre: Drama, Crime, History
Released: 2015
Cast: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Julianne Nicholson, Dakota Johnson, Kevin Bacon

Black Mass is a grim, unglamorous account of Whitey Bulger's reign over South Boston and the FBI deal that protected him. Depp disappears under prosthetics into a reptilian stillness; Edgerton plays the agent who talked himself into corruption one favour at a time. It's colder and slower than the usual gangster template, more interested in institutional rot than spectacle — a mood piece about mutual self-deception.

TMDb rating

6.5

If you liked this

The Departed2006

Scorsese's Boston crime epic draws on the same real underworld — Jack Nicholson's Frank Costello is a direct echo of Bulger — and plays the FBI-versus-mob double-cross with far more energy and wit.

But It's flashier and funnier than Black Mass; if you wanted the slow institutional dread rather than pulp-thriller pacing, this is a different animal.

GoodFellas1990

The genre's gold standard — voiceover, tracking shots, the slow curdling of loyalty into paranoia. If Black Mass's cold stillness left you wanting more voice and velocity, this delivers it.

But It's a more seductive, glamorous telling of organized crime; some of the moral queasiness gets traded for pure cinematic pleasure.

Donnie Brasco1997

The same FBI-mob entanglement, flipped: an undercover agent who starts loving the family he's meant to betray. Pacino is heartbreaking, and it's an emotional mirror to Connolly's corruption.

But It's warmer and sadder than angry — if you want another cold, clinical true-crime portrait, this leans toward tragedy of friendship instead.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

On the Waterfront1954

Black Mass's entire engine is the informant relationship — a criminal trading information for protection, and the agent who lets him. This is the film that made informing American cinema's great moral trap, decades before Bulger turned it real and monstrous.

Brando's longshoreman wrestling with whether to inform on the union bosses running his docks is the moral blueprint for every informant story since, including Bulger's monstrous version of it.

But It's black-and-white, stagier by modern standards, and its Catholic redemption arc is far more hopeful than anything in Black Mass.

The Town2010

Affleck's Boston heist thriller shares the accents, neighbourhoods, and blue-collar criminal codes, wrapped around a propulsive plot that keeps real tension throughout.

But It's a heist movie with romance and action set-pieces, lighter on the true-crime historical weight that gives Black Mass its heaviness.

American Gangster2007

A true-crime rise-and-fall with the same interest in how corruption and law enforcement enable a criminal empire, relocated to 1970s Harlem.

But More stylish and operatic than Black Mass's flat grey realism; the moral ambiguity feels less unsettling, the storytelling more conventional.

Killing Them Softly2012no page yet

A bleaker, more cynical vision of organized crime as failing bureaucracy rather than glamour — cold and quiet, very much in the same spiritual neighbourhood.

But Almost no plot momentum; it's mood and dialogue over story, which can feel inert if you want narrative drive.

Public Enemies2009

Depp again, another true criminal legend, another government agency circling — this time John Dillinger, shot with a hazed digital coldness that suits the fatalism.

But It's more of a chase movie and less about institutional betrayal; Depp's Dillinger is romantic where his Bulger is reptilian.

The Irishman2019

Scorsese's late, elegiac mob epic shares the same interest in the loneliness and self-justification underneath organized crime — a longer, sadder companion piece.

But It's three and a half hours of slow-burn regret; patience is required, and the de-aging effects divide people.

Casino1995

Another Scorsese true-crime epic about the systems — corporate, criminal, governmental — that let one man run a kingdom until it collapses under its own weight.

But It's glossier and more maximalist than Black Mass, with an entirely different scale — Vegas excess rather than Boston grime.

Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger2014

This is the true story Black Mass adapts, told by the people who lived it and the reporters who spent decades unpicking the FBI's role — watch it to see how little of the film's 'insanity' was actually invented.

The real trial, the real Bulger, the real FBI files laid out without makeup or movie stars — a courtroom documentary stranger and angrier than the dramatization.

But No score, no famous faces, and the procedural detail of an actual federal trial is slower and drier than a feature film.

Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger poster

The Shield2002

Connolly's arc — a law enforcement officer convincing himself that corruption is control — is Vic Mackey's entire premise; The Shield just stretches that self-deception across years, in a different city, in a different genre register entirely.

A cop show about a rogue LA unit that polices through the exact swapped morality Connolly practiced — protection, informants, and a slow descent stretched across seven brutal seasons instead of two hours.

But It's a long-haul commitment, pulpier and more overtly violent, and its antihero cop is more charismatic than repentant — don't expect the film's chilliness.