Once Again, Inside the Mob

How much Mafia can you take? Are you entranced by the Talmudic distinctions between a wise guy, a made guy and a connected guy? Do you relish hearing cold-eyed thugs mumbling, “I don’t mean no disrespect”? “Donnie Brasco” is waiting for you.

For those without a Mafia habit, things are more problematical. “Donnie Brasco” is an ambitious film with an effective and modulated performance by Al Pacino that should make “forget about it” (pronounced “fhuggedaboudit,” more or less) a national catch-phrase, but its aims are often unrealized and undercut.

This is not only because Mafia pictures are overly familiar, a glut on the market. “Donnie Brasco’s” look at the stresses of undercover work has also been done earlier and to better effect in a pair of Sidney Lumet films, “Prince of the City,” which starred Treat Williams, and “Serpico,” headlined by Pacino himself.

Those films involved infiltrating the police, not the mob. And they didn’t have “Donnie Brasco’s” focus on showing what happens when genuine friendships are formed between the spider and the fly. But problems in both structure and casting leave these themes hanging, and even the fresh eye of eclectic British director Mike Newell (“Dance With a Stranger,” “Four Weddings and a Funeral”) can’t make this film feel other than second-hand.

Based on a true story of FBI penetration of the mob in the 1970s, “Donnie Brasco” was written by Paul Attanasio before he did the much-applauded script for “Quiz Show.” Its intention is to delineate character, to put a more human face on the lower end of the Mafia food chain.

As Lefty Ruggiero, “Left” to his intimates, Pacino carefully creates the role of a good mob soldier with 26 hits under his belt, “a spoke in the wheel” who does the dirty work and never complains.

Trading on his deep eyes and shopworn dignity, Pacino shrewdly underplays Lefty, leaving us with an affecting portrait of an old warrior weary in the service of the dons and hungry for some human contact and appreciation. After the showy work of “Heat” and the outright hamminess of “Looking for Richard,” it’s a welcome change.

A chance encounter in Little Italy introduces Lefty to Donnie Brasco, a.k.a. “Don the Jeweler” (Johnny Depp). The aging veteran takes a shine to the new fence on the block, treating him like a son (his own is an addict) and teaching him the myriad rules of wise guy behavior, things like carrying your money in a roll, not a wallet.

More important, Lefty vouches for Donnie, giving confederates his personal assurance that the kid is OK. With his support, Lefty says, “even Jesus Christ couldn’t touch you.” Which is good news for Donnie, who in real life is FBI man Joseph Pistone, an agent consumed with getting inside the mob so he can help destroy it.

“Donnie Brasco’s” main concern turns out to be the conflicts Pistone faces in his double life, the strains that enter his relationship with his family and, as the two get closer, with Lefty as well.

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Neither of these areas comes off as planned, but Pistone’s inability to connect with his wife, Maggie (Anne Heche), and their small daughters is the film’s least successful section. And part of the reason is a simple question of structure.

The film introduces us to Pistone when, undercover for two years, he’s already turned into a mob type. We never get to see him as a regular guy, never know what he was like before his undercover job started eating him alive, and the change in him that so upsets his family is weaker for having to be taken on faith.

Despite the presence of a fine young actress like Heche, the scenes with the agent’s family are the weakest parts of “Donnie Brasco.” It’s almost like the filmmakers, as in love with the chance to make believe they’re tough guys as Pistone is, can’t wait to revel in that repetitively macho world of made men talking tough and whacking each other.

Handled better is what happens between Donnie and Lefty. Though the agent boasts to his superiors, “I got my hooks in this guy,” in fact the relationship, like those hooks, cuts both ways. As a line from the wildlife documentaries Lefty watches in his spare time puts it, “hunter and hunted, predator and prey, the endless cycle of nature.”

Hampering this part of “Donnie Brasco,” however, is Depp’s performance. The actor’s most characteristic work, from “Edward Scissorhands” and “Benny & Joon” through “Ed Wood” and “Dead Man,” called on Depp to be a cipher whose emotions are difficult to read. That bland, opaque quality is a disadvantage here; whatever else this star is capable of, making audiences feel his pain is not at the top of the list.

With only Lefty to empathize with, “Donnie Brasco” is more one-sided than anticipated. Though the outline of what the film has tried to do is visible, so little feels at stake emotionally that anyone intending to care about these characters would be well advised, for want of a better phrase, to simply fhuggedaboudit.

* MPAA rating: R, for some strong graphic violence, pervasive strong language and brief nudity and sexuality. Times guidelines: one especially brutal scene of dead bodies being hacked to pieces.

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‘Donnie Brasco’

Al Pacino: Lefty

Johnny Depp: Donnie

Michael Madsen: Sonny

Bruno Kirby: Nicky

James Russo: Paulie

Anne Heche: Maggie

Mandalay Entertainment presents a Baltimore Pictures/Mark Johnson production, released by TriStar Pictures. Director Mike Newell. Producers Mark Johnson, Barry Levinson, Louis DiGiamo, Gail Mutrux. Executive producers Patrick McCormick, Alan Greenspan. Screenplay Paul Attanasio, based on the book by Joseph D. Pistone with Richard Woodley. Cinematographer Peter Sova. Editor Jon Gregory. Costumes Aude Bronson-Howard, David Robinson. Music Patrick Doyle. Production design Donald Graham Burt. Art director Jefferson Sage. Set decorator Leslie Pope. Running time: 2 hours, 1 minute.

* In general release throughout Southern California.