Black Mass

As the title suggests, Black Mass exercises a Satanic evil — in a
character paradoxically named Whitey.

Like the real-life character, this Whitey Bulger is a killer with
reptilian charm whose psychopathology goes far beyond the proffered
explanation of LSD experiments at Alcatraz. He's driven to build and
secure a criminal empire but relishes torture for its own sake.

While Bulger is careful not to be seen taking a satchel of money, we
see him strangle and shoot people. He has a limited fastidiousness. The
genre usually has the boss delegate such hands-on work. These graphic
scenes connect Whitey to his crimes, even as he's coldly detached from
any emotional connections other than his mother and son, who both die
early. Even when he offers his young son guidance it's on how to get
away with violence not to eschew it.

Whitey hates rats but he can rationalize turning informer for the FBI.
it's a business arrangement, by which the feds will help the Irish gang
boss wipe out his rival Mafiosa.

The film's central theme is the antithesis of connections and "pulling
the plug." That phrase recurs. Whitey implicitly pulls the plug on his
girlfriend when she explicitly says she'd pull the plug on their
brain-dead son.

There's a constant tension between a character's respecting his bond
and breaking it. Hence the narrative's structure, reminiscences by his
gunsels turning state's witness against him. So, too, Whitey's frequent
strategy of pretending to forgive and accept someone immediately before
killing him/her.

There's a wide range of connections here. Whitey's brother is a leading
state politician who steers completely clear of Whitey's criminal life.
But he has to resign from his university chancellorship when he's found
to have been in contact with the fugitive Whitey. In that fraternal
connection, he failed to pull the plug completely enough.

The third of these childhood friends is FBI agent John Connolly, who
uses his old connection to enlist Whitey as informer. For failing to
pull the plug he goes down. So does fellow agent John Morris, who moves
from tentative conspirator to terrified. Typical of Satanic evil,
Buiger has a seductive pull that enables a rationalization of justice
to gloss the self-interest. The dapper suit, gold watch and new-found
swagger are but signs of Connolly's corruption by his fidelity to his
old friend.

The Bulger boys' mother loves both, obviously, and may or may not be
guilty of cheating Whitey at gin. But Connolly's wife pulls the plug on
their marriage when she's exposed to Whitey's insinuating evil
unmasked. As described above, Whitey pulls the plug on his relationship
before his girlfriend does.

Whitey and Connolly — but not Whitey's legit brother — make a big deal
out of their old friendship and their connection to the neighbourhood.
Here loyalty covers a multitude of sins and moral compromise. So, too,
Whitey's brief service to the IRA's cause, an extension of his role of
Irish warrior against the Italian gang, the South Side of Boston
against the North. Where you're from is a much-touted bond, to compel
loyalty, but the truly moral will pull that plug when virtue requires.

Gunsel Steven is connected to his girlfriend's daughter but overextends
that connection in their sexual relationship. When the cops probe her
connection to Whitey's gang he strangles her. When Whitey turns against
Morris for revealing his family's secret marinade recipe, he
demonstrates the sinister danger in any connection to such evil. The
scene ends with Whitey's even more chilling violation of Connolly's
wife. The only healthy character in the house, she pleads illness.

There are two humorous replays of the theme. An end credit promises no
profits have resulted from the film's use of cigarettes. That is,
nothing is connected to the smoke. And the film's most senior law
officer is played by Kevin Bacon, mister six degrees of
separation/connection himself.

Obviously the film's subject goes beyond Whitey Bulger to America's
knotted and inextricable binding of good and evil, the criminal and the
law. One hand washes the other. The film derives not just out of the
gangster genre but out of the even more characteristic American
tradition, the Western. There American civilization is rooted in the
gun and the noose. Gunmen brought "civilization" to the wilds and
gunmen secure their families and relationships in the urban jungle.

These days that paradox extends even further, to the international
tyrants that America befriends and supports in its own thus morally
compromised interests. Hello Saudis and Iran. Goodbye, naive confidence
in any easy honour.