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

Joe Berlinger, the director of the award-winning Paradise Lost documentary series, is once again opening Pandora’s Box and letting out some unsettling secrets. After 16 years on the lam, career criminal James “Whitey” Bulger was finally apprehended in Santa Monica in 2011. For almost three decades this charming sociopath ran South Boston with an iron fist, and it appears he had several high-ranking law enforcement and government officials in his back pocket. Basically, Bulger terrorized Beantown with impunity. This hard-boiled documentary mainly explores Whitey’s relationship with the FBI; they say he’s an informant, he says they were on his payroll. A tangled and grisly web emerges through interviews with his attorneys, the prosecutors, ex-henchmen, Boston journalists, G-Men, and the relatives of his victims. With it’s shakedowns, secret safes, grainy surveillance footage and a rogues gallery cast of characters, it’s a fascinating real life noir tale.