Fuggedaboudit

Arizona Daily Wildcat Courtesy of TriStar Pictures. Johnny Depp as "Donnie" with Al Pacino as "Lefty" in "Donnie Brasco."

The movie begins with Lefty, an aging hitman played by Al Pacino, taking small time Donnie "the jewel man" Brasco (Johnny Depp), a.k.a. FBI agent Joe Pistone, under his wing.

As Brasco moves closer to the inner circle of the mob, Lefty gives him lessons on how to be a "wise guy." "Wise guys never pay for drinks," he says, "a wise guy's always right, even when he's wrong. Fuggedaboudit. . ." The script might call for Brasco's wising up, but on the screen Johnny Depp never catches on. Unable to depart from his cute and detached style, Depp is out of his element in the New York mob world.

Set in 1978 and based on a true story, "Donnie Brasco" tries to hark back to the gritty realism of films from the early seventies. Its on-location street scenes, long takes, and emphasis on dialogue are reminiscent of films like "Taxi Driver" and "The French Connection." Perhaps the most similar film from this era is "Serpico," a movie that starred young Al Pacino in the true story of an undercover cop who exposes the corruption of the New York Police Department.

Pachino clearly outshines Depp onscreen, and "Donnie Brasco" fails to either tell its own story or give a full picture of the complex politics of organized crime. Instead we get tinted shades, some funky acting by co-stars Michael Madsen and Bruno Kirby, and half a dozen loose story ends. When the mafiosos pay a visit to Florida in search of fresh crime turf, Brasco gets hold of a luxury yacht, complete with crew and swimsuit models, to impress the local gangsters. The boat is supplied by the FBI, but none of the otherwise paranoid "wise guys" seem to wonder how a two-bit like Brasco got a hold of it. Later in the film, as Lefty sees a picture of the boat in a newspaper story about an FBI sting, Brasco explains that it couldn't have been an FBI boat. "And even if it was," he says, "they didn't catch us." Even an experienced actor like Al Pacino has a hard time pretending to believe this performance.

Besides deceiving the mob, FBI agent Joe Pistone has to deal with his bosses and his family. But with the exception of a few scenes, these side stories rely on standard clich‚s. His wife (Anne Heche) won't accept his extensive absences and wants a divorce, and his bosses at the Bureau are out-of-touch bureaucrats whose adherence to standard protocol almost gets him killed.

Despite being based on a true story, this movie, much like Johnny Depp's acting, never really takes shape. It keeps our attention, but as a gritty, realistic gangster film - fuggedaboudit.