Donnie Brasco

This 1997 film was, I think, the one that launched Johnny Depp’s adult career–you could quibble about Nick of Time, but not seriously–and pairing him with Al Pacino was a terriffic choice. For a change, also, being based on a true life story didn’t doom this to boredom and failure.

Donnie Brasco (Depp) is the cover name for FBI agent Joseph Pistone, already under for two years when the movie opens with the scene where Depp and Pacino, playing a made guy named Lefty Ruggiero, meet. Lefty is wondering what he has to show for 26 hits and 30 years of being a wiseguy and sees Brasco as a chance to improve his standing with the bosses, someone he thinks is a high end jewelry thief and a good earner. Pistone, initially, is thrilled at finally being able to move his overly long operation to a level that can bring results.

Anne Heche (in honestly one of her few performances I enjoyed) is the wife Depp can rarely go home to, who can barely see the good, college educated man she married transformed by this deep cover assignment, their marriage nearly destroyed by his absence. It was, after all, only expected to last three months. Michael Madsen by this time had developed a pretty good aptitude for playing sociopaths and does well here as Lefty and Donnie’s skipper and Zeljko Ivanic is good as Pistone’s concerned case handler.

Directed by Mike Newell (whose work I appreciated in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire but didn’t in Mona Lisa Smile) and written by Paul Attanasio (who also dropped some fine Homicide: Life on the Streets scripts around this time), Donnie Brasco is a clear precursor to The Sopranos and a stepping stone from Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Casino with its intermingling of family and ‘work’ and the fine line tread by the main character between what he knows is right and the attachment he’s developed to Lefty and their crew.

definitely recommended