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Wise Guys Never Pay For Drinks

Two of my favorite actors, Depp and magnificent Al Pacino, shine in the story of Joe Pistone.

Pistone was the now famous undercover FBI agent who infiltrated the Mafia.

Brasco, a 1997 film directed by Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral), is not your usual mobsters movie. There's a lot of emotion here, personal emotion I mean, not just the usual dose of guns, blood and Italian food.

Johnny Depp is very credible and gets the job done quite well, transmitting at every time the tension around Donnie Brasco, Pistone's secret identity, in his dangerous mission right in the heart of one of the five families of the New York Mafia during the late 1970s.

Donnie befriends Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino) and starts climbing positions in the organization.

At some point in the movie you start rooting for Lefty. He's an unusual role for Al Pacino, who's been a Godfather, a drug dealer and something in between (remember Carlito's Way?)

Lefty is a long time middleman eager to please his bosses in the Bonnano family, but he's just a loser who's never been ascended and everybody goes over him. Lefty is getting sick of being a nobody and his “career” is going nowhere, so, when he meets Donnie he decides to become his mentor and sponsor him into the mob. Lefty will help Donnie to become a wise guy, a connected guy.

Donnie Brasco is supposed to be a dealer of stolen jewelry or, as Lefty is told when he notices Donnie, “Donnie, Don da'jeweler.”

The beauty of this flick comes from the relationship between Lefty and Donnie. Donnie knows Lefty will pay the price when his real identity is eventually discovered, but he has a mission. A mission that will take away six years of his life and will threaten with destroying everything he loves and care about. Is this sacrifice worth taking?

At one point Pistone's wife (Anne Heche) accuses him of becoming like the mobsters he's trying to put in jail. "I am them," he answers. Sad but true; Pistone was so involved in his character that even some agents in the FBI thought he was a real wise guy.

Donnie and Lefty's boss is Sonny Black, an always appropriate Michael Madsen, and every Tarantino's fan knows there's nobody better than Madsen to play a sumbitch mobster.

There are some funny parts in the movie, like the explanation about what forget about it is, but this is a tragic story after all, even more if you consider that it's based in real facts, a story told by agent Joe Pistone himself in his book Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia, which I haven't read yet but it's high on my to-read-list.

I consider Lefty's scene preparing to meet his destiny a classic. Al Pacino at his best. You can feel his sorrow when he puts his wallet in the drawer.

And listen to me, if Donnie calls... , tell him... if it was gonna be anyone, I'm glad it was him. All right?

Brasco shows us what the real mob life is like. It's not Don Corleone buying fruits. It's a treacherous world when money is everything and finding a friend like Lefty just happens once in a lifetime.

Brasco is a story about loyalty, or the lack of it, friendship and sacrifice. A beautiful story that I'll never get tired of watching.