Mob Movie Monday "Black Mass" Review Starring Johnny Depp with Michael Franzese

i'm not a rat we kill rats i just formed an alliance with the fbi to get rid of my enemies so i'm no informant at least that's what whitey bulger said [Music] [Music] hey everybody welcome to another sit down with michael francis hope everybody is doing well hope you had a good weekend and today is by far one of the most popular days for all of you it's mob movie monday and you know i was thinking about doing you know the godfather of harlem good one we're gonna get to that and then i also thought of another one that i know everybody wants to see scarface everybody's been asking me about that and couple of others but today by popular demand we're going to be doing black mass i think everybody knows what that's about it's the whitey bulger story and it's a movie came out a couple of years ago it was based upon a book that i think was written in 2001 called black mass and i saw the movie a few years back when it first came out and you know i got to say something i was with my wife and we left the theater and my first reaction to the movie was man was that a dark movie i mean just dark everything about it you know coming from me who spent you know 20 years on the street to have that reaction i'm wondering what other people might have thought about it it was a great movie you know johnny depp was terrific i thought the makeup was fantastic on it and the story was great it was done well another one of those great movies i think it got very good ratings and it did good financially at the box office but it was really a dark movie it was a movie that uh at least in the movie uh whitey bulger didn't have many you know saving grace qualities so to speak nothing that really redeemable about him it was that kind of a film but it's worthy certainly of review it is a mob movie it is reality again they do take you know dramatic liberty in these films but from what i know about this this is fairly accurate you know more accurate than some of the others out there um so we're going to review it we're going to talk about some of the scenes that stood out for me and let me give you a little background on the whitey bulger story you know whitey bulger was part of the winter hill gang um in boston he was an irish guy you know tough guy obviously you could see it in the film and um they were pretty ruthless gang and as the story goes whitey um got involved with an fbi agent that he knew from childhood governing mcconnelly and he started to be to become an informant with connelly at least the way the movie depicts it and basically he did that because the fbi really according to that agent was after the italian guys uh the mob guys in boston and they wanted to use whitey bulger to help them get to the mafia in boston and bulger according to the film saw that as an opportunity initially he didn't want to become an informant they didn't like the idea he says we kill informants but he thought it might be a good way for him to eliminate some of his enemies so he started to make a deal and become an informant uh for the fbi now the thing is the the guys that he went against the mob guys that he won against uh was the patriarchal crew patriarcha family and in particular a guy bennett may jerry angelo and jerry was the underboss of that family he was somebody that i knew fairly well i had involvement with jerry and i thought it was a good guy you know i liked him a lot and we had some business together not going to get into that but um you know that who that's who really was the target of the fbi allegedly and of uh whitey bulger so this unholy alliance formed between the two of them and you know the dynamic is interesting man it's uh a lot of stuff going on in this this movie because whitey bulger's brother was a state senator you know billy bulger and he was uh it was a powerful guy one of the most powerful guys in the state state senator and uh connolly the fbi agent knew him also as a child and you see some interaction between the two of them that turns bad at some point and so let's get into some of the scenes but really interesting i think you know what happened to whitey bulger in the end may as well you know get into that uh he did finally he was a fugitive for i think 16 years he was on you know the fbi's most wanted list i think he was number two after osama bin laden at one point in time and uh an informant finally gave him up after 16 years on the run he was apprehended in santa monica very interesting i lived in santa monica at that time and whitey bulger came out afterwards used to walk up and down the third street promenade where i went quite often with my wife and kids and you know i i can't state this emphatically but after i saw the picture of whitey i felt that i did see whitey in the street because we used to go there a lot and he used to walk up and down and he was in disguise but but uh i thought i recognized him him and his girlfriend and um very very interesting but they apprehended him there they got a tip from an informant i think somebody that was living in his building somehow they found it out he got arrested and um he went to trial back in boston i think they tried him on i don't know 19 murders convicted in him on 11. i think he got a bunch of life sentences went into the federal uh penitentiary and he was later on killed and i think hazelton usb hazleton uh some of the guys there allegedly it was ordered by one of the italian guys and they beat him up pretty bad heard him bad and killed him on the spot he was in a wheelchair there was some controversy as to whether or not you know the fbi i mean the bureau of prisons uh intentionally put him in that prison around guys that they knew would eventually uh uh kill him is that true i don't know that's a theory i can tell you this i know the bureau of prisons sometimes make mistakes i think i told you about that in another video that when henry hill was in the witness protection program and he was on separation from me and a lot of other mob guys by mistake the bureau of prisons put them in the fci that i was in at the time in terminal island and i think i told that story i'm not going to be redundant so i do know that the bureau of prisons does make mistakes in that regard in that case if it was a mistake it was a fatal one he's gone so anyway let's get into the the film and what i think are some of the realistic uh uh scenes all right the first one is a scene where uh it starts to show the um the war i would say between the angelos the patriarchal crew and whitey bulger and there is a scene there where um they actually beat up joey angelo who's related to jerry angelo and that is one of the reasons why this war between them started it wasn't really a war but you know a lot of friction between them it never developed into a war but again um the fbi agent in charge connolly when he finally meets with um whitey bulger he tells him that jerry angelo is going to kill you we got word he's going to kill you and you may as well join up with us because we can help each other but this scene is pretty dramatic it's pretty graphic i mean they beat this guy up pretty bad they didn't kill him but they left him for dead uh but he survived and it's uh you know unfortunately part of the life man you're on the street you're in that life and uh listen i spent 20 years there i saw my share of things like this and a very realistic scene all right moving on there is a scene there that kind of shows the relationship uh between senator uh bulger billy bulger and connolly and they start to talk and i think um you know connolly is is trying to tell senator bulger that it would be a good idea if whitey bulger and him uh would work and help each other in other words he was trying to recruit whitey bulger as an informant and he goes to his senator brother who says white is business is white he's business none of my business you want to talk to him go talk to him and i'm sure that's pretty much the way it would work out it seems that the senator was clean i don't think in reality he really had anything to do with his brother it was his brother but he was clean in that regard he wouldn't have been made the senator if he wasn't there would have been a lot of dirt that came out but anyway it was a good scene very realistic and i think that was pretty accurate in real life and then there is that scene the two uh guys whitey bulger and agent connolly drive up in a car and they get out of the they're in some desolate place and they get out of the car and this is when connolly lets whitey bulger know jerry angelo is gonna kill you words all over the street if you join with me i can make this easy for you you can defeat your enemies it's really the mafia that we want we don't want you i can help you jimmy and you can help me we want the angelo brothers we want to take down the patriarchal family as a matter of fact um their whole office you know the the us attorney at the time uh they wanted to take down the the patriarchal family so connolly figuring on his relationship with the bulgers with whitey that he could recruit righty bulger at first why'd he resist he said i'm not a rat we kill rats i don't want anything to do with it john do you know what i do to rest uh but connolly keeps working on him and eventually he does uh get to whitey in that regard now you know this is really interesting there's no question you know i think uh historically you could see that whitey bulger was a pretty ruthless guy i mean he uh he was charged with 19 murders convicted of and he was a pretty ruthless guy and again you come away from that movie thinking what redeeming quality does this guy have it's really dark well couple there's one scene there where he's talking to his son and the son has rye syndrome he's a sickly kid and he's talking to his son his son got in trouble because he uh he punched some kid in the face and they're sitting at the dinner table you know whitey's wife or girlfriend whatever she was at the time and the son in whitey and whitey is telling his son i'm not mad at you that you punched a kid in the face he said what i'm mad about is that you let somebody see that you punched him in the face the next time make sure nobody's around and the wife or you know the kid's mother is come on man this is what you teach him but it was in some way a redeeming quality because you see the relationship that he had with his son it was one of the only redeeming qualities i can see with this guy throughout the whole film and uh and then this isn't there's an extension of this uh there's a hospital scene and it's a dramatic scene where um whitey runs to the hospital because his son has gone into a coma he's brain dead he had rye syndrome and his mother by mistake gave him aspirin which was no good with rye syndrome and that caused him i think to go into a calm and become brain dead and they're sitting at the table and whitey obviously loves his son and it's it's a very it's a tough moment and uh you know the the the wife or the kid's mother is telling whitey i pull the plug i pull the plug because i don't want my son to be brain dead and whitey is like angry says you pull the plug on my son and she says to him oh stop don't play that game with me you're the last person that should you don't play that game with me with the kind of a guy you are but uh again the dynamic there loved his son he's upset that the wife pulled the plug meanwhile this guy according to the movie is a real killer you know again no redeeming quality but you know it was uh it was one of the uh the softest spots i would say in the film but even there you know the makeup was great i mean johnny depp did a great job but he had this cynical look about him the whole time so uh you know quite scary looking guy in the film and obviously they made him look that way but that was if you have to look at a redeeming quality in him it was the fact that he loved and cared for his son so much ironic right but listen regardless of what people do on the street i mean they love their families you know i mean that's just the way it is good scene another scene that you know again to show what kind of guy he was the girlfriend or you know sometime girlfriend of steve flemmi his good friend she's young girl she gets locked up for something and they're in the car speaking and uh white is really questioning her saying hey you slept in the police department last night what is it that you told the police and she goes on to tell him well i didn't tell him anything you know i told him you were a good guy and i told him you never did drugs and i told him you dressed right and you didn't curse and she's saying all the right things but in whitey's mind is in other words she's talking to the cops well that was dangerous for him and you know the cynical guy that he is he says okay you did a great job and he takes her to an apartment that he was going to allegedly rent for her or give to her and he kills her in the apartment and uh tough scene man i don't see that happening quite often in my former life i don't remember of any woman getting killed maybe one time i would say uh that i knew that it happened but uh if this really did happen and i don't know that it did i'm not saying it did but in the film you know ruthless i mean it was uh was a terrible thing to have happen so you know i mean those are the scenes that really stood out for me um let me tell you how the movie ended you know and and again pretty realistic there was this incestuous relationship throughout the film between the fbi agent connolly and whitey bulger and in the end you know everybody goes down as usual everybody goes down connolly went down because his superiors didn't like what he was doing he's they saw that there was an incestuous relationship and you know if you're an fbi agent you're not supposed to be giving any information to a criminal to a target to hurt other people the mafia cops were allegedly doing that they got in trouble went to prison um you know donnie brasco was never accused of that didn't do anything like that he played it straight as far as the fbi is concerned and uh retired you know from the agency with honor but there were other agents that did that de vecchio you know i think you know the story there with uh the grim reaper uh greg scarpa one of our guys you know with me i know him a long time you know but in here there was definitely an incestuous relationship and eventually that did come out connolly did get indicted i think he actually got a long prison sentence because i think they they indicted him also for giving information that resulted in the murder of someone and i think he got 40 years if i'm not mistaken the state senator whitey's brother uh unfortunately he had to resign because why while whitey bulger was on the run he was in touch with him not allowed to do that so he had to resign as a state senator and go on to do another job i think was a chancellor of a university or something so that didn't work out good uh all of whitey's guys steve flemmi ended up going to jail for a long time but he became an informant another kid there that was very close to him kid by name of kevin weeks i think he became an informant uh whitey was caught on tape saying a number of things so as usual this thing ends bad for everybody and people you know if i have one thing to say i've said it over and over again but i can't say it enough especially if the young people are listening that's why i go to you know these prisons all the time and speak to these young people if you get into the street life you're gonna go down too many informants on the street government is too sophisticated law enforcement's got all the tools and the weapons these things never work out as a matter of fact i would like you to tell me a story in recent history recent times especially since the 80s when these racketeering racketeering laws came about tell me something about somebody where it ended up good because i don't know any if you can tell me one i'd like to hear it as a matter of fact you got the comments section i get a lot of them send it in doesn't happen you know that's why i consider myself one of the most fortunate blessed guys you know to be out of that life now over 20 years and to have a life so that's the moral of the story but great movie i recommend that you watch it absolutely you're going to enjoy it thank you for subscribing again we're over almost up to 340 000 in six months thanks to all of you subscribe because then you get these alerts you're gonna know what's going on appreciate it 500 000 we're going to do another big giveaway better than the first one promise you on that and uh so that's it michaelfrance.com i'm always telling you join the crew you're gonna love it we got so much new content coming in there and i'm involved with everybody you're gonna love it so that's it for today how do i always leave you my friends be safe be healthy god bless you and i will see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Michael Franzese

Views: 431,029

Rating: 4.9368868 out of 5

Keywords: michael, franzese, michael franzese, mafia, mob, mobster, mob boss, mafia boss, caporegime, colombo, colombo family, colombo mafia, gambino, gambino family, bonanno, lucchese, genovese, al capone, john gotti, american mafia, italian mafia, federal prison, fat tony, sonny franzese, mob monday, mob movie mondays, mob movie monday michael franzese, black mass, black mass review, mafia sit down, black mass johnny depp, mob movie review, mob movie reaction, movie review, movie reaction

Id: hGtgCY6Vx6U

Length: 17min 41sec (1061 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2021