Starring Johnny Depp. Rated 14A. Now playing

Whitey Bulger is a fascinating criminal.

A young street fighter in South Boston, he became an airman, then a truck hijacker.

While in prison, he was subjected to the MK-Ultra protocol and given mind-altering drugs.

He joined and eventually took over the Winter Hill Gang, becoming a major player in Boston’s street crime in the 1970s and '80s.

He fed tips on the Italian mafia to John Connolly, a former South Boston kid turned FBI agent from the same neighbourhood who reciprocated by deflecting criminal investigations away from Bulger and giving him warnings about approaching arrests.

Bulger used his wealth to help fund the IRA. Meanwhile, Bulger’s brother became the President of the Massachusetts state senate.

It’s an incredible story. Black Mass gives us these facts, and less.

The difference between a fact-based movie and a one-hour A&E special is emotional investment. If you’re only interested in the highlights of a criminal career and the end result for the people concerned, you might as well watch the special.

The power of film is that it can bend or add to situations and thereby create characters that lead you through a story. You don’t have to like the people, but you expect to understand them to some degree, maybe even identify with them and the human needs that led them to bury other human beings under bridges.

Black Mass does not do this. It gives us a Bulger impression by Johnny Depp that is notable mainly for the uglifying hair-thinning makeup. The man is utterly impassive unless strangling people. We see a number of his activities, and nothing from his perspective.

We do see a lot of Joel Edgerton sweating, boasting and ranting as John Connolly, the de facto main character, but we don’t get a sense of whether Connolly was being clever or delusional in his deal with Bulger. We hear about his childhood adoration of the criminal, but we don’t see it or feel it. We observe him getting warnings from his wife and co-worker, but not his reaction, understanding, or choices. He’s a prop, a simulacrum of the real thing, which is how this movie stands in relation to the gangster classics that inspired it.