This is based on a true story about a FBI agent who went undercover in the mob . But there's a couple problems with this type of tale .
1 ) You find yourself comparing it with other true life mob tales like GOODFELLAS
2 ) Almost all of the audience tension should revolve around the cop coming close to getting his cover blown
It's interesting to note that the production of this film was held back due to the success of GOODFELLAS . Good idea because despite its own merits DONNIE BRASCO would have been viewed as a poor relation to the classic Scorsese mob flick . But even so you do find yourself comparing the two movies of which this one is the lesser . It's mainly due to the fact that GOODFELLAS opens with a sickening execution and never lets up on the shocks while DONNIE BRASCO pulls its feet very slowly . There's a lot of bad language but that's mainly due to their being a large number of talkative scenes with very little action until the second half of the movie with many of the talky scenes revolving around Donnie's home life
As for " the undercover cop is going to get his cover blown " subplot I was reminded of other movies like the classic WHITE HEAT and the little known Brit thriller ID and again this movie pales slightly in comparison with Donnie having to come up with a smart move to keep his identity secret only one time . Of course being a true story I shouldn't criticise too much since the producers were probably aware of this and didn't want to embellish the integrity of the facts
I did give this seven out of ten which means the positives outweigh the negatives. This is the type of movie that is almost entirely carried by the cast . Pacino once again plays a gangster but he's not some psychotic mafia don here he's more of a middle ranking gangster who loses his status to a young turk and plays his character in a far more subtle manner than what we're used to . Johnny Depp is convincing enough ( He should since the movie revolves around Donnie ) and Michael Madsen is very good , again his playing is far more subtle than what might be expected . The violent scenes despite taking a long time to come are as brutal and as memorable as anything you'd see in a Scorsese movie
All in all DONNIE BRASCO is worthy of your time but if it'd been about twenty minutes shorter with most of the edited out scenes having involved Donnie's domestic friction this might have actually have been a classic true life gangster film
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