Donnie Brasco Details

In this 1970s-set crime drama, Al Pacino stars as a sleazeball who inducts young Brasco, played by Johnny Depp, into the codes and “family” values of organised crime. In fact, Brasco is an FBI undercover agent whose job threatens his marriage to Anne Heche as well as his life. In a way, it's a curious reversal of Pacino's earlier role in Serpico, in which his character went undercover. Directed by Mike Newell — a change of pace from Four Weddings and a Funeral — it's pitched midway between the epic Godfather and the flash GoodFellas, and develops nicely as Depp finds himself becoming rather fond of his monstrous mentor. The period setting — a world of tacky shirts, fur collars and plastic lawns — is also beautifully evoked.

A mob movie, based on a true story, that takes an almost academic interest in the rituals and manners of its denizens, concerned less with their actions than their characters, which gives it an effectively tragic intensity as two different sets of loyalti