Donnie Brasco

National Review, April 7, 1997 by John Simon

ONE of the great, troubling problems is that even in the best people there is often something that is not good. And a yet more troubling problem is that even in the worst people there is often something good. This is the subtext of a very fine new gangster movie, Donnie Brasco, which, despite its genre, qualifies as a work of art.

It is based on a true story, the memoir of Joseph D. Pistone, the FBI agent who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family for two years of perilous undercover work, which led to the breakup of that powerful mob. A thrilling enough tale of suspense is here made outstanding by the human element in which it abounds. Pistone, who pretended to be a jewelry fence named Donnie Brasco, gained the confidence of a minor, aging Mafioso, Lefty Ruggiero, who became his friend and sponsor, and came to regard him as his surrogate son. Pistone -Brasco, in turn, became deeply attached to Lefty, and tried hard to protect him from both the Mafia and the FBI.

While undercover, Joe, or Donnie, could only sporadically communicate with his wife, Maggie, and their daughters by telephone, and occasionally pop in for short, surprise visits. He could almost never make it to important occasions in the girls' lives, or tell his wife about his work or his whereabouts. The strain on an otherwise very good marriage was enormous.

Add to this gripping plot first-rate dialogue: Paul Attanasio, who also wrote Quiz Show, has supplied a screenplay that sounds tough, funny, scary, at times almost poetic, and always, even when it takes liberties with the facts, disarmingly true. Then add director Mike Newell, who gave us Enchanted April and Four Weddings and a Funeral, and who here surpasses himself.

There is not a false move in this two-hour movie bursting with incident and detail, revealing and riveting even in its throwaway scenes, so that it seems both longer and shorter than it actually is. Longer, because there appears to be more crowded into it than we can absorb -- and yet we do, more or less; shorter, because it all goes by so excitingly and involvingly that we wish it would never end.

Next, there is the exemplary casting and acting. We have seen Al Pacino in every permutation of the good-bad and bad-good guy, but not in a long time in so rewarding a role, and rising so assuredly to its challenge. Lefty bemoans his having "clipped" 26 guys for the Family and still been constantly bypassed for promotion; even an old dog gets a piece of warm pavement to stretch out on, but not he! Pacino brings so much ironic humor, bitter mockery, and understated pathos to the part that he makes us forget Lefty's criminality and suffer and hope with him and, at the last, perceive his fate as tragic. He displays and sustains the best hangdog expression this side of a basset hound, shot through with fugitive whiffs of merriment, feelingfulness, and rage. His clothes are both outrageous and pathetic, especially the porkpie hat that looks more like a fallen souffle; but mostly it is his expressions that look rumpled, his features slept-in.

Equally astounding is the Donnie of Johnny Depp. There is something both too young for his age and too old for his youth about this FBI man who, as he heatedly explains to his hurting wife, has become not just "like one of them," but "one of them." Depp's underlying expression is one of bewilderment and awe (phony, or is it?), behind which lurks the alert observer, ready to thrust or parry as needed. With his FBI colleagues, he can be urgent or relaxed; with his wife, tough or pleading; with his children, awash in solicitude. The young actor manages transitions and nuances with the skill of a veteran --say, an Al Pacino. And yes, the two actors together are even bigger than the sum of their parts.

Anne Heche is lucently compelling as the put-upon, sometimes rebellious, but patently loving wife. And what superb performances from a large cast of assorted Mafiosi and lawmen and their womenfolk, too numerous to name here, save for Michael Madsen, as a rising capo, and Bruno Kirby, as a double-dealing henchman, who must be mentioned, if only because of the size of their roles. And I'll throw in Zach Grenier, as a marriage counselor in a particularly fetching scene. For once in a Mafia movie, the scenes with family are as persuasive as those with the Family. Even the soundtrack is admirable, and not only for Patrick Doyle's score, better than the composer's usual work for Kenneth Branagh, but also for such details as when in a tumultuous outdoor scene in the Florida night you can clearly hear the crickets chirping away.

Although not everything is strictly factual here, the fictional aspects blend in seamlessly. One of my favorite episodes has Donnie and a bunch of wiseguys in a Japanese restaurant, where the maitre d' insists on everyone's removing his shoes. Donnie can't oblige without revealing the tape recorder in his boot and the wire up his leg. What ensues is spine-tingling and heart-rending -- somehow both gruesome and comical -- but my lips are sealed.