Donnie Brasco . Tucson Weekly . 03-06-97

Donnie Brasco

DIRECTED BY: Mike Newell

REVIEWED: 03-06-97

Zesty Italian mobsters shoot, hack and smash each other to smithereens one more time in this reprise of the Mafia flick. There's nothing new here, but if you're a fan of the mobster drama, this one's entirely passable. Johnny Depp, that pretty, pretty man, is really quite good as Donnie Brasco (a.k.a. Joe Pistone), an undercover agent burrowing deep into the structure of the Brooklyn (or is it Queens?) Mafia. His special gangster friend is Al Pacino, an aging, rat-like professional killer who somehow elicits more love and loyalty from Brasco than his adorable daughters and hot-fox wife. The sweeping themes of loyalty, honor, manhood, and manly death seem to aim for some sort of marriage of the worlds of Shakespeare and John Wayne; but Brasco lacks sincerity and originality and really only succeeds in invoking other, better, gangster movies.

--Piers Marchant

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Donnie Brasco
Donnie Brasco

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