Black Mass 4K 2015 Ultra HD 2106p

The picture will tell about Whitey Bulger, a famous Boston gangster, who was on the run for 16 years and was arrested in June 2011 in Santa Monica. Bulger, now in his 80s, was charged with racketeering, was involved in 19 murders and at the same time worked as an informant for the FBI. To stay out of jail, he disappeared in 1995 and successfully evaded justice for 16 years.

User Review
A small but violent Irish gang led by James Bulger (Johnny Depp) runs rampant in the South Boston of the latter half of the 1970s. When local native FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) returns to duty in Boston, he uses his acquaintance with Bulger to turn him into an informant for the bureau. The criminal mastermind leads the authorities on his rivals from the Italian mafia, and the FBI in return “roofs” Balger and guarantees him total impunity. Within a few years, the Irish mafia takes all of Boston under its control, and the FBI becomes an actual accomplice to nightmarish crimes.

A well-chosen title can say a lot about a movie. Take, for example, such titles as “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas.” Pleasant titles of pictures about unpleasant people indicate the ambiguous attitude of movie authors to their characters, and this duality permeates the narrative and allows you to create complex and deep paintings.

Johnny Depp tried to meet the real James Bulger, but the criminal, serving two life sentences, refused to help the superstar
“Black Mass,” by contrast, draws a parallel in its title between Mafia-FBI collusion and perverse devil's service, and thoughtful viewers immediately realize that there will be no ambiguity in the film. And indeed, based on real events, the crime drama of actor and director Scott Cooper (“Crazy Heart”, “Out of the Furnace”) for two hours hammered into the audience's heads a simple idea that the FRB in the person of Connolly committed a terrible crime when he made a pact with the “Irish demon”.

At one time it was speculated that the role of John Connolly might be played by Tom Hardy. Edgerton and Hardy starred together in the family sports drama Warrior
In this film immediately makes it clear that Connolly, despite all his tirades about the importance of fighting the mafia, was guided not by concern for the public good, and his still childish desire to impress the “coolest guy in the neighborhood” and generously repay Balger for the fact that he was at school a couple of times protected John from bullies. It seems hard to imagine a more pathetic character than a federal agent who sucks up to a gangster sociopath - not for money, not for power, but for the feeling that once experienced Gulchatai in “White Sun of the Desert”: “Mr. appointed me favorite wife!”

Maybe Bulger isn't as much of a sociopath as he seems when you read his bloody gangster resume? No, he treats only three people well - his mother, his son, and his brother - and those feelings are never put to the test. It's easy to love an elderly stay-at-home mom, a blonde angelic boy, and a successful politician brother who lives his life (Bill Bulger was president of the Massachusetts Senate) and doesn't interfere with a relative's criminal existence. That's something a badass villain is capable of. Another thing is families like the Sopranos or the Corleones, whose members are forever testing each other's mettle. So the fact that James does not “order” his brother, but communicates with him in a friendly manner, does not say anything. The movie just does not give the hero an excuse to show his worst side in relations with his relatives.

With everyone else James is not ceremonious. Bulger is not one of those criminal bosses who only plan operations and assign “dirty work” to his henchmen. He doesn't miss a single opportunity to personally deal with a traitor or a bystander. And he not only shoots, but also strangles - a clear confirmation of James' sadism.

Unlike many screen criminals, Bulger does not evoke the slightest sympathy, and this, as already mentioned, is the essence of the picture. A pathetic little man from the FBI plus a ruthless scumbag from the mafia - a recipe for one of the most scandalous fiascoes in the history of the bureau, and Cooper tries to cause the audience righteous anger, so that the Boston tragedy will never happen again. The director's intentions are good, but as soon as it becomes clear that the movie is exhausted by them, “Mass” in the eyes of the audience turns into a tedious enumeration of the same type of crimes Baljer and Connolly. And since the Irish Mafia is the least colorful of all American ethnic groups, the film can't even hide its primitiveness behind criminal eccentricities and depictions of the lives of “fresh” immigrants.

The only bright spot of this tape - an impressive reincarnation of Johnny Depp in a frightening “authority” like Humpback from “The Place to Meet You Can Not Change”. It is impossible to believe that the screen former Jack Sparrow and Willy Wonka. But we can't admire Depp without noting that he and the director went overboard with the makeup and turned Bulger from an ordinary, believable criminal into some kind of ghoul who is just about to release his fangs and start bleeding from his throat. The villain of “Black Mass” would look better in a dark comic book adaptation than in a realistic crime movie. This, however, does not contradict the main goal of the movie - the scarier the villain, the stronger the audience's righteous anger. But such a Bulger is not only scary, but also ridiculous, and the picture loses from this.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (68.0 Mb/s)
Resolution: Upscaled 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
#French: Dolby Digital 5.1
#German: Dolby Digital 5.1
#Italian: Dolby Digital 5.1
#Spanish (Latino): Dolby Digital 5.1
#Japanese: Dolby Digital 5.1

Info Subtitles

English SDH, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (Cantonese Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Portuguese), Russian, Slovenian, Spanish (Castilian), Spanish (Latin American), Swedish, Thai, Turkish.