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Donnie Brasco is an interesting bit of undercover cop drama, in that the undercover cop begins to feel empathy, friendship, and develop a strong bond with his new mentor in the mafia. The fun is in watching our undercover cop struggling valiantly with his allegiance, trying to decide to stick with his missions or help out his new friend.
While watching Donnie Brasco I was reminded of what a great actor Johnny Depp used to be, before he decided to hide behind increasingly deranged makeups and giving kooky readings instead of truly inhabiting and developing a character. I miss this Depp, who could pick strange projects or characters, but imbue them with an inner life. And it’s great to watch him slowly transition from interloper to inside man to conflicted friend. His brittle nerves and moral quagmire constantly written all over his face with each return visit home. Anne Heche does solid work as his fretting, worried wife who is sinking more often than she’s floating to keep everything together and remain strong.
Outside of the The Godfather trilogy, I’ve rarely, if ever, managed to warm-up to Al Pacino as an actor. I find him to frequently turn the dial up to eleven to start, and only get louder as he progresses with a characterization. Sometimes that scenery chewing tendency is a great antidote to a lackluster film (Dick Tracy), and other times it’s not (Scent of a Woman). Here Pacino starts at a lower-level and gradually builds to the larger one, and I quite enjoyed his performance. A scene where it’s open to debate whether or not he’s figured out that Depp is deceiving him at a houseboat is a marvel of nervous energy and suspicious behavior trying to be masked by a cracking exterior.
My only real complaint is that director Mike Newell frequently tries to steal from the GoodFellas playbook. It led me to wondering what Scorsese could have conjured up with this cast and this material. There are many times at which Newell’s choices in film-making feel less organic and his own, than a brief consideration of “What Would Scorsese Do?” This does not torpedo the film, but it does, at times, play an odd tone. Nevertheless, I greatly enjoyed Donnie Brasco for what is was – a well-made thriller in which we watch a man have a crisis of conscience.
