LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Iseerphia All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

adam_pittavino Donnie Brasco is a mob movie based on the true story of FBI Special Agent Joe Pistone, played by Johnny Depp, and the New York mafia group he infiltrated in the late 1970's. This isn't your typical gangster film. Donnie Brasco has a softer touch and the emotional undercurrent that is sparse in its predecessors is what makes this movie one of the best 90's dramas. Joe Pistone poses as Donnie Brasco, an orphan jeweller that's been taken under the wing of Benjamin 'lefty' Ruggiero, a down on his luck street hustler with "26 hits under my belt" who has become disillusioned with the mafia institution he's given his life too. This is a raw look at the gritty working class life of a mob crew that scrap and fight for every cent they can muster. There's very little glitz and glamour within this mob and the daily hustle of making a buck wears thin on the gang and even more so on Donnie and his over the hill mentor Lefty. As impressive as Johnny Depp is, this is Al Pacino's film, the master bringing a lifetime of experience and wisdom to his role. Director Mike Newell's mafia entry is very respectable, he manages to hold his own against the likes of Coppola, Scorsese and De Palma as directors who have mastered this genre before him. Donnie Brasco gives the audience a glimpse of blue collar crime within the mob that's rarely been seen in a movie before or since.

merelyaninnuendo Donnie BrascoThere seems too little space left to work on in a genre that is introduced so many times even repeated too and still even though being of a familiar premise it has some new shoes to fill into it which eventually results into low on drama or even entertainment. Donnie Brasco is an overlong stretched script that is predictable and flat out exhausting in its first act only to discover that the rest of it was just mundane. Mike Newell picks out his favourite details and sequences from the book and executes it with all the conviction but in the end there just isn't enough material to keep the audience investing in it. The only part that got it right was the star cast and boy oh boy what a star cast it is, Johnny Depp and Al Pacino face to face on screen encounters are the only highlights about it. But how much can a performance carry around a movie on its shoulder, Donnie Brasco lacks better editing, gripping screenplay and a soul.

Anssi Vartiainen It's the 70s in New York and Donnie Brasco, a young jewels experts, gets pulled into the mafia by an ageing gangster named Lefty. Donnie is introduced to people, given responsibilities, allowed in the know about the rules of the crime family, all that jazz. But not everyone is as they seem and soon inner quarrelling threatens the integrity of the family.Watching this film feels slightly weird if you've seen Goodfellas, like I have. Because they're eerily similar in their portrayal of mafia. Like scene for scene similar. There's talk about made men, my friend versus our friend, all that stuff. They even exchange wads of cash for Christmas, just like in Goodfellas. I get that that is actually how the mafia just might work, but it's still weird how much stuff is pulled from that movie. Because the stories are not all that similar at all. Goodfellas is about mafia from the point of view of mafia, whereas this is about infiltration, examining the mafia from the point of view of an intruder.And it's a good movie all around. Johnny Depp and Al Pacino are both powerhouse actors, despite this being relatively early on in Depp's career. The story is interesting, the gangster world created is even more interesting and it just has style to it. Goodfellas perhaps portrayed the lure of mafia better, but this allows us to see the ugly underbelly of that.All in all worth a watch for all gangster movie fans. It has it all.

stones78 This slightly different mafia film has several familiar faces, including Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby, and Anne Heche, with Pacino giving the best performance as the down-on-his-luck mobster Lefty Ruggiero, who is responsible for introducing Agent Joe Pistone(Depp)into the mob. The best moments were the interactions between the 2 great actors, Pacino and Depp, as they were both very believable in their roles. I thought they both followed the factual book by author Pistone rather well. On the other hand, I felt that Sonny Black's character(Madsen)could've been developed a bit more than just a secondary character; in the book, he's just as important as Lefty, maybe more than that. Without spoiling too much, the ending of the book is very different than the film's convenient ending, in regards to Lefty and Sonny's fate. I got slightly bored when Pistone had arguments with his wife Maggie, played by Heche, as it slowed the film down. Other than those aspects I just mentioned, I still find this a very solid mafia film, but not a great one.