DONNIE BRASCO
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Tri-Star) Starring: Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby, Anne Heche. Screenplay: Paul Attanasio, based on the book by Joseph D. Pistone. Producers: Mark Johnson, Barry Levinson, Louis DiGiaimo, Gail Matrux. Director: Mike Newell. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, violence, brief nudity, sexual situations) Running Time: 125 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
At first glance, Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino) seems like a dozen movie mobsters you have seen before, like a dozen movie mobsters Pacino has played before. He struts, he poses and he boasts in his first meeting with jeweler Donnie Brasco (Johnny Depp); when Donnie appears ready to end that meeting, Lefty announces "You don't walk away from Lefty...Lefty walks away from you." Don't judge Lefty, or DONNIE BRASCO, by that first impression, though Lefty himself might have preferred it. The fact is that Lefty is a loser: a thirty year mob veteran still working as a minor lieutenant in Brooklyn, a compulsive gambler in debt to his own people, a father with an addict for a son. In his own mind, however, Lefty is a winner because he is a wiseguy. When Lefty takes Donnie under his wing as a protege, he revels in describing the details of how a wiseguy talks, how he dresses, how he carries his money and himself. He fetishizes those details, because his only sense of self-respect comes from being part of that world, and he instantly takes to Donnie because Donnie seems to be the only person who gives him any respect.
Unfortunately for Lefty, he has picked the wrong protege. Donnie Brasco is actually FBI agent Joseph Pistone, working deep undercover to gather evidence against the mob. DONNIE BRASCO is based on a memoir by the real-life Pistone, who spent six years collecting information which would lead to hundreds of arrests and convictions. He also spent those years largely separated from his family and becoming ever more wrapped up in the world he was supposed to be helping to bring down, and DONNIE BRASCO spends a fair amount of time on how his work affected his personal life. We see his wife Maggie (Anne Heche) coping with raising their three daughters alone, and arguments over how much Joseph/Donnie's personality has changed. As the time nears to draw the net around Donnie's crew, his superiors in the FBI begin to worry that he has begun to think of his mob life as his real life.
As it turns out, the domestic drama in DONNIE BRASCO is actually the least interesting aspect of the film. Anne Heche is stuck with the thankless "long-suffering wife" role, with predictable lines in predictable scenes; it's hard to imagine anyone giving an interesting spin to a line like "You're becoming like them." Depp's performance is solid and under-stated, a welcome shift from his string of saintly eccentrics. Unfortunately, Joseph is already immersed in his undercover persona when we first meet him, making it difficult to understand how much he is supposed to have changed and why Maggie is still putting up with him.
The reason those scenes are most frustrating, though, is that Lefty is so much more fascinating a character than Joseph/Donnie. Al Pacino has often been prone to bigger-is-better style of acting, but in DONNIE BRASCO he harnesses that impulse to turn in his best performance in at least fifteen years. There is a wonderful sequence during the second half of the film in which Lefty and Donnie head down to Miami to investigate an opportunity running a night club. Lefty sees the club as his big chance to strike out and accomplish something on his own, and he sets up a meeting with Miami's local boss to get the necessary permission. When the Miami boss shows up for the meeting, however, he is accompanied by Lefty's own boss Sonny Black (Michael Madsen), who has decided to take charge of the enterprise himself. As we watch Lefty fold in on himself in disappointment -- compounded by the fact that he believes Donnie has stabbed him in the back to earn Sonny's favor -- it is impossible not to feel sympathy for him. What makes the situation even more pathetic is that the club is a front for yet another FBI undercover man, making Lefty's lost dream an illusion from the start. Pacino's performance is sweet, crude, funny and haunted, and gives DONNIE BRASCO an unexpected emotional pull.
Lefty's hard life is made all the more tragic by the way organized crime is portrayed. Under the direction of Mike Newell (FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL), DONNIE BRASCO doesn't crackle with the same energy as films set in this world made by Scorsese or DePalma, but it is a different impression of mob life Newell and gifted screenwriter Paul Attanasio (QUIZ SHOW) are after. Where other films have made mob life seem terribly attractive and glamorous, DONNIE BRASCO shows it as petty and tedious. Sonny Black's crew is always looking for a decent new idea while making do with hijacking trucks full of razor blades and breaking open sawed-off parking meters, and their scramble to make the weekly payment to the big boss makes them just as desperate as salesmen trying to meet a quota. There is nothing Shakespearean about the power struggles in DONNIE BRASCO. They are more like inter-office bickering gone haywire, and the rare (but extremely graphic) moments of violence leave everyone's hands dirty. The beauty of Attanasio's script -- and Pacino's performance -- are that they make Lefty's dedication to his role as lowest man in the lowest crew something touching. What begins as the story of a troubled undercover man is someone else's story by the conclusion: the story of the Willy Loman of wiseguys.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 unwiseguys: 8.
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