This Underrated 2015 Crime Drama Is Finally on Netflix. Here’s Why You Should Watch It

Great crime dramas used to be one of the most common genres of movies. It’s not that the genre has completely disappeared, that’s true, but these days it can be harder to find a well-told cops and crooks story. With Black Mass Coming to Netflix on September 12, the gap in the crime film world has been filled a little.

The film, which tells the story of Whitey Bulger’s criminal empire and his partnership with the FBI, is now nearly a decade old. If you missed it when it first hit theaters, here are three reasons why you should definitely make time to catch it while it’s streaming.

It brings together a great cast

Black Mass – Official Main Trailer (HD)

Johnny Depp received a lot of praise for his performance as Whitey Bulger, but he is far from the only reason Black Mass is worth watching. The film is filled with great actors who were either emerging or established at the time, including Benedict Cumberbatch as Bulger’s brother, Joel Edgerton as the agent who turns him, Jesse Plemons (Civil war), and Dakota Johnson (Mrs Web).

Black Mass is so compelling in part because each actor has a face you remember and they have the necessary gravitas to make the story they are telling feel realistic.

It is based on a remarkable true story

Black Mass is not the kind of film that tells the true story step by step, but the film is based on the true story of Whitey Bulger’s criminal enterprise, which he ran while also working with the FBI to take down the Italian mafia.

The film is particularly compelling because many of the details feel realistic, and because it’s a reminder that amid all the fictional mob stories, there was a real battle going on between federal authorities and the mob, and that they were willing to recruit some truly awful people to do their dirty work.

It is a meditation on the impossibility of justice

Black Mass is interesting in part because it’s a film where no one comes out clean. Instead, we realize that the police are in bed with the bad guys, and we learn that even though many of the people in this story have served long prison sentences, nothing can undo the damage they’ve caused.

Director Scott Cooper is careful to emphasize that justice doesn’t erase damage, and Bulger’s story, compelling as it was, had real costs and victims. This is a film that never forgets that it’s mostly about the bad guys, and that ordinary people can be nothing more than collateral damage.

Black Mass is streaming on Netflix.