After re-watching the first three seasons of Fargo, I still had a craving for some crime drama. This 1997 movie, based on a true story of an FBI agent who infiltrated a New York City Mafia family during the 1970s, more than satisfied it.
Johnny Depp made his name playing colourful weirdos and eccentrics, but he gives a subdued and grounded performance as FBI agent Joe Pistone, assigned to pose as jewel broker Donnie Brasco. He manages to win the trust of Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino), a hitman who eventually brings him inside a mob family. The double life takes a massive toll on Pistone, who has a wife and three little daughters back home. His marriage is falling apart and he has trouble knowing who he really is, a cop playing a wiseguy, or a wiseguy for real.
Director Mike Newell, a Brit whose filmography includes hard-boiled entries like Mona Lisa Smile, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Four Weddings and a Funeral, seems like an odd choice to helm this gritty crime story. Donnie Brasco lacks the flashy filmmaking of something like Goodfellas; there are no spectacular heist sequences or shootouts with the law. However Newell’s conventional, matter-of-fact approach works for a movie that mostly concentrates on the mundanity of the Mafia world. It still has that familiar mix of unpredictable violence and absurd humour, but barely any glamour, and it frankly makes mob life look like an unalluring, miserable existence.
It is also a touching portrayal of friendship between two men that you know has nowhere else to go but tragedy. Lefty is a loyal soldier who just doesn’t have what it takes to move up the ladder, and gets constantly upstaged and overlooked. After giving decades of his life to the family, he is saddled with extreme paranoia, cancer of the prick as he calls it, and a pathetic junkie son. Lefty is all primed for a surrogate son like Donnie, whose quick wits and promising career might reflect well on him. “Al Pacino” and “gangster” might sound like a tired combo, but his performance here is easily one of his best, equal parts humour, menace and pathos. You can see why Pistone becomes attached to Lefty, and as a viewer you feel the same despite him being a killer. I dare anyone not to be moved by Lefty’s final appearance.
Though the chemistry between Depp and Pacino carries the film, Anne Heche is also excellent as Pistone’s wife Maggie, who is at the end of her tether where their marriage is concerned (“I pretend I’m a widow,” she tells him at one point). Michael Madsen oozes lethal danger as Sonny Black, a gangster promoted to lead the crew, and Paul Giamatti pops up in a small role as an FBI agent.
That Donnie Brasco is somewhat overlooked is a shame. It does have many great scenes and brilliant passages that should have been widely quoted by everyone, such as when Pistone explains the many nuances and meanings of fuggedaboutit to the other agents. In a more harrowing sequence, the crew’s visit to a Japanese restaurant takes a violent turn when Pistone has no choice but deflect attention from his unwillingness to take off his shoes and reveal the secret recorder. I’ve also been guilty of neglecting this movie for years, so I’m glad that I finally checked it out.
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