Johnny Depp really struts his stuff in this one. As notorious mobster. James “Whitey” Bulger, Depp runs with the devil (and a few hours worth of top notch prosthetic make up). Whitey came up as a small-town criminal in South Boston in the 70’s and with the help of the FBI, became one of the most dangerous men in American organized crime well into the 90’s. That line about the FBI is what makes this story so interesting. While the extent of how far up the chain the FBI knew about how John Connelly was handling his “informant,” Whitey paid off a ton of people to let him do his thing. It wasn’t until Whitey’s dealings got too big for him to wrangle that made everything collapse in on him, forcing him to run for almost two decades.
Black Mass has a lot going for it (great cast) and if you dig mob stories, this one is for you. Pretty rough in the cursing and violence department.
Why does something like Spotlight have to exist? The 2001-2002 story of The Boston Globe doing an expose on the rampant pedophile coverup of the Catholic Archdiocese going back to the 60’s. Over the years, events would come to light about a priest molesting children in their congregation. These “bad apples” were said to be nothing more than anomalies, would be appropriately handled and don’t represent the Catholic Church. The offender would disappear and everyone would move on.
But the offender wouldn’t disappear. They were moved to another church in direct contact with children, free to attack again. When they got found out, the church would settle things with the family privately (i.e. out of court) and the monster would be moved again.
What started out as 1 repeated name quickly turned into 4…then 13…then 87. Through diligent and expert investigative reporting, the men and woman of “The Spotlight” section of The Boston Globe blew the doors off a horrific worldwide epidemic that was known and hidden by a shocking amount of people. Evil was allowed to not only fester, but grow in an institution that is supposed to be sacred and represent the best of humanity. It’s completely nuts how these monsters weren’t reported to the police the moment it was reported. Let this nugget really blow your mind:. a few months after this blew up publicly, Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, the man central to the cover-up of hundreds of ruined lives and the protection of dozens of maniacs, resigned as the Archbishop of Boston in December 2002. Two years later, this man who you can really trust,  was given a promotion by Pope John Paul II to become the Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome in 2004. He retired at the age of 80 in 2011. Ugh.
This is some mindboggling stuff. Everyone agrees that 1) Rape is heinous and 2) so is pedophilia. So how the hell does stuff like this get let go? Stamp it out the second it appears. Everyone wins! Many rational human beings knew this was happening and let it go buy them with a pat on the back. Some jerk in a fancy smock is going to feel awkward about explaining what’s going on so let’s not bring it up? Preach against the devil but you got demons running around your own house and think it’s OK?
Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention, the movie is good.