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Not too surprisingly, given his years as a low-level hood, Lefty has no intention of taking Joe at face value. There's far too much at stake (his life mostly) to risk getting involved with a rat. Thus, to Joe's surprise, Lefty starts hacking away at the car's radio, searching for a telltale wire. Finding nothing, Lefty continues with the smart questions (he may be small-time but he's not stupid). Has Joe got a girlfriend? Yes, but she's in California. Joe has all of the answers and doesn't put a foot wrong. When the final test pans out, with an acquaintance giving Joe the thumb's up, Lefty is ready to introduce Joe to the Bonanno family, as "a friend of mine". With that Joe's on the road to the top, just another foot soldier waiting in the chill air for a glimpse of the big boss.
On the bottom rung of the ladder, Lefty works with hoods like Sonny Black (Michael Madsen), Nicky (Bruno Kirby) and Paulie (James Russo) on the jobs that nobody else wants. Constantly chasing after the quota that's passed forward week after week, sometimes they resort to cracking open parking meters. It's a poor existence and Lefty knows that he's reached his limit with a pokey apartment, subservient wife Annette (Ronnie Farer) and junkie son. For Joe, his relationships are in a similar state of disrepair. Claiming to be an orphan, he has effectively abandoned his wife Maggie (Anne Heche) and their three young daughters. In fact, Joe probably spends more time with his FBI handler Tim Curley (Zeljko Ivanek) than he does with Maggie. Still, he's piling up the evidence, all of which comes in useful when Sonny Black gets promoted to skipper and pitches into conflict with rival boss Sonny Red (Robert Miano).
While Donnie Brasco seems to be treading the extremely familiar ground of the "Mob movie", Mike Newell manages to turn everything on its head. Instead of concentrating on the bright lights and the bosses, instead we get to see the dim bulbs of the Mafia and their run-of-the-mill lives. Down here every dollar's a struggle, the consequence of a litany of failed scams. For Lefty, Joe might just be his ticket to the big-time, since Sonny Black seems to have forgotten Lefty's loyalty (while he was in the can). In this way, Joe and Lefty make the perfect couple. Each is providing the other with an entry point, a way into the inner circle, while at the same time they're each burdened with a secret. Lefty is burnt-out and demotivated, while Joe embodies the worst of Lefty's fears. The problem here, however, is that Donnie Brasco fails to move beyond these establishing moments. Just when we want to know more about their feelings and families, the film comes up short. Without this emotional context, all that comes after fails to resonate, a fatal flaw when any movie concentrates almost exclusively on just two characters.
Central to Donnie Brasco are Pacino and Depp, the only characters sketched in anything more than a cursory fashion. Both give fine performances, with Pacino having the slight edge, but in different ways. Pacino, bringing the weight of his many previous Mafiosi roles to bear, imbues Lefty with history and a sense of having seen death too many times. He's been slaving for various masters for thirty years and now Lefty's tired of the constant grafting, the distrust, the lack of respect and his stagnation. With Joe comes the chance to be someone, to redeem himself and shore up his morale. Depp, for his part, projects equal measures of ruthlessness, intelligence, desire and naivety. He's a blank slate, willing to re-wire his personality in whatever way is required. If that means sacrifice, so be it. The problem is that Joe loses sight of himself, and why he's there, by becoming close to Lefty and starting to care. Elsewhere characters are barely given time to establish themselves, such that no one distinguishes themselves from the blur.
The primary difficulty with Donnie Brasco is the script and Newell's interpretation of the same. Not only is the storyline simplistic, almost to the point of switching good and bad guy roles for the FBI and gangsters, but what remains lacks dynamism. It's all well and good diving into the minutiae of mob life, but you've got to have some emotional extremes (beyond a few lulls and swells). What Donnie Brasco needs is the pressing tension of possible discovery, a sharply contrasting brutality and a building of concern for the innocents of the tale. Without these it looks juust too easy, with Joe barely breaking sweat even when he's wired for sound. This is not to say that Donnie Brasco doesn't have its moments, because it does. It just seems that most of these are derivative, an unnecessary re-hashing of Scorcesian elements. Ultimately the movie adds little that is fresh to the genre, bar a slightly different angle. Such a waste of a beautiful dilemma.
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