Donnie Brasco 

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Based on the true undercover adventures of FBI agent Joey Pistone, "Donnie Brasco" stars Johnny Depp as Brasco, a man who infiltrates the New York mob, befriending hitman Lefty (Al Pacino) in the process. Lefty is the man that Brasco/Pistone has pledged to destroy, but instead grows to care about him in a genuine way that begins to eat him alive.

The movie itself is an odd assemblage of wonderful ideas and good performances; Pacino's Lefty is a sad creature, a mafia "spoke on the wheel" that has a vulnerability not endemic to many mob movies. His old-school acceptance of his fate is endearing and eventually heartbreaking, and the director Mike Newell strokes the complicated relationship between Lefty and Brasco with the kind of finesse that earned him praise for "Four Weddings and a Funeral." Depp, however, is not given enough to work with here. His metamorphosis from "family man" to "mobster"—a phenomenon the film desperately wants us to believe - seems empty and forced. We don't know enough about his past to care much, and his long-suffering wife is a stock "cop spouse" character that Mike Newell should know enough to avoid. Indeed, the problem may be that all the definitive mob movies have been made. After all the Godfathers and Goodfellas have passed though our consciousness, we may not have room for much more. Characters remind us of others, lines are interchangable, and the endings are similar. I mean, how many times can we see our faves "get whacked"?

—Ian Williams

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