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DONNIE BRASCO
Director Mike Newell and his two stars deserve the lion's share of credit for 1997's Donnie Brasco, an atmospheric and moody docudrama that is an on-target look at small-time mob sensibility, bathed in rich period detail without making the lifestyle look as glamorous as it has been portrayed in other films and how so many innocent outsiders are affected by it.
This is the true story of a New York police officer named Joe Pistone (Johnny Depp) who was sent undercover to infiltrate the mob for three months as Donnie Brasco, but as our story begins, he has been in for over two years now and is in perhaps too deep to get out. The central story here concerns the relationship between Joe/Donnie and a veteran wiseguy named Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero (Al Pacino) and how Donnie allows this relationship to become the most important thing in his life without even realizing it's happening, keeping his superiors at arms' length and destroying his real life with wife, Maggie (Anne Heche) and his three daughters.
Newell has taken facts and molded them into riveting and believable screen entertainment that keeps the viewer on the edge of his seat, due to the complexity of Donnie's life and how much longer he can continue to do this. Donnie's feelings about the whole situation seem to be conflicted to him as they do to us...we observe him in his bare apartment marking the days off the calendar and yet when he does get the opportunity to sneak home to his family, he doesn't offer even a hint about when he might be coming home for good, though when he is home, he still tries to assert himself as man of the house and Maggie is unsure if he hasn't lost that privilege and it's hard not to agree with her...there is a wonderful sequence where he has come home for Christmas and we see him doing ordinary household chores that most people would find mundane, but he is totally relishing this time with his normal life.
On the other side of this story we have Lefty, a wiseguy whose best years are behind him trying to keep his head above water as part of this life because he really doesn't know any other kind of life. It's hard not to like Lefty because of his relationship with Donnie...we almost feel bad for him because in two years Donnie has built complete trust with this guy, which either makes Donnie the smartest cop on the planet or Lefty a complete idiot because in two years, Donnie has to have slipped up somewhere...I can't believe he tells Lefty that he was an orphan and that he has absolutely no family anywhere and Lefty just accepts that.
Newell manages to recreate 1970's New York with frightening accuracy and does a nice job of offering explanations for various forms of "mobspeak" that we've all heard for years but never really knew what they meant specifically. We learn what the difference between "connected" and "made" means and the difference between being a "friend of mine" and a "friend of ours" means. There is also one terrific scene where Donnie explains the multiple meanings of the most famous mob phrase ever..."forgeddaboutit."
But above everything we have two powerhosue performances from Pacino, giving us Michael Corleone 30 years later, trying to hold onto his legacy and Depp, a man trying to do his job and hold onto his sanity and always teetering on the edge but always thinking. Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby, James Russo, Zeljko Ivanek, Gerry Becker, and Brian Tarantino offer solid support, but it is the work of Pacino, Depp, and Newell that make this one work...completely riveting entertainment that was the fastest two and a half hours I have had at the movies.
Director Mike Newell and his two stars deserve the lion's share of credit for 1997's Donnie Brasco, an atmospheric and moody docudrama that is an on-target look at small-time mob sensibility, bathed in rich period detail without making the lifestyle look as glamorous as it has been portrayed in other films and how so many innocent outsiders are affected by it.
This is the true story of a New York police officer named Joe Pistone (Johnny Depp) who was sent undercover to infiltrate the mob for three months as Donnie Brasco, but as our story begins, he has been in for over two years now and is in perhaps too deep to get out. The central story here concerns the relationship between Joe/Donnie and a veteran wiseguy named Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero (Al Pacino) and how Donnie allows this relationship to become the most important thing in his life without even realizing it's happening, keeping his superiors at arms' length and destroying his real life with wife, Maggie (Anne Heche) and his three daughters.
Newell has taken facts and molded them into riveting and believable screen entertainment that keeps the viewer on the edge of his seat, due to the complexity of Donnie's life and how much longer he can continue to do this. Donnie's feelings about the whole situation seem to be conflicted to him as they do to us...we observe him in his bare apartment marking the days off the calendar and yet when he does get the opportunity to sneak home to his family, he doesn't offer even a hint about when he might be coming home for good, though when he is home, he still tries to assert himself as man of the house and Maggie is unsure if he hasn't lost that privilege and it's hard not to agree with her...there is a wonderful sequence where he has come home for Christmas and we see him doing ordinary household chores that most people would find mundane, but he is totally relishing this time with his normal life.
On the other side of this story we have Lefty, a wiseguy whose best years are behind him trying to keep his head above water as part of this life because he really doesn't know any other kind of life. It's hard not to like Lefty because of his relationship with Donnie...we almost feel bad for him because in two years Donnie has built complete trust with this guy, which either makes Donnie the smartest cop on the planet or Lefty a complete idiot because in two years, Donnie has to have slipped up somewhere...I can't believe he tells Lefty that he was an orphan and that he has absolutely no family anywhere and Lefty just accepts that.
Newell manages to recreate 1970's New York with frightening accuracy and does a nice job of offering explanations for various forms of "mobspeak" that we've all heard for years but never really knew what they meant specifically. We learn what the difference between "connected" and "made" means and the difference between being a "friend of mine" and a "friend of ours" means. There is also one terrific scene where Donnie explains the multiple meanings of the most famous mob phrase ever..."forgeddaboutit."
But above everything we have two powerhosue performances from Pacino, giving us Michael Corleone 30 years later, trying to hold onto his legacy and Depp, a man trying to do his job and hold onto his sanity and always teetering on the edge but always thinking. Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby, James Russo, Zeljko Ivanek, Gerry Becker, and Brian Tarantino offer solid support, but it is the work of Pacino, Depp, and Newell that make this one work...completely riveting entertainment that was the fastest two and a half hours I have had at the movies.