02/28/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Donnie Brasco
Mobster movie eludes heat

** (out of five)
Starring Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby, James Russo, Anne Heche. A TriStar Pictures release written by Paul Attanasio, directed by Mike Newell. At the Harbour Mall, Opera House, Showcase North Attleboro, Showcase Warwick, Tri-Boro and Woonsocket cinemas. Rated R, contains violence, profanity. Running time: 121 minutes.

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

Donnie Brasco is a bore . . . a two-hour, talky mob movie that rarely comes alive.

It lacks the wit and humor of Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas or the rat-a-tat-tat energy of Francis Coppola's The Godfather trilogy, even though it stars Al Pacino. Actually, Pacino tries to get by with his now-stale mumbly mobster routine that hasn't worked in some time.

Pacino plays aging low-level gangster Lefty Ruggiero, who takes a young novice under his wing, hoping that the kid, played by Johnny Depp, will be his ticket to better things in the organization. But Lefty discovers too late that his protege is an undercover FBI agent whose name isn't really Donnie Brasco, but Joe Pistone.

"In all the five boroughs, I'm known," is how Lefty introduces himself to Donnie with bravado. Lefty is trying to unload a fake diamond ring on Donnie at the time, but Donnie isn't buying.

Impressed, however, by the young man's intelligence and daring, Lefty soon invites Donnie over to watch him make coq au vin. Not long afterwards he's introducing Donnie to other members of the mob, a collection of wiseguys who might as well just be sitting around playing cards all day for what we see of their activities. The only hint early on that they're criminals is a throwaway montage in which we see clothes and other loot, including a lion, being boosted.

Donnie begins to rise within mob circles. And because his corner of the gangster world, headed by the heavyweight Sonny Black (Michael Madsen), is also moving up, Donnie's work becomes increasingly important to the FBI. In fact, the film is based on a true story.

Unfortunately, that doesn't make it all that interesting. There's not a lot of chemistry between Depp and Pacino, nor between Depp and anyone else. He's a loner who tries to play by his own rules, showing disdain for his FBI bosses and ingnoringhis wife and children.

There's a potentially interesting subplot about the friction between Donnie/Joe and his wife (Anne Heche), who is around to carp about his long absences and mysterious nighttime appearances. Their marriage is foundering, but she doesn't know how to save it. She's the movie's victim.

British director Mike Newell, who put the fizz in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Enchanted April, plays most of Donnie Brasco on one level. There are so few highs and lows that when he stages a gory mob massacre, complete with the victims being sawed apart afterwards (something that Scorsese did much better in GoodFellas), it's one of the few times Donnie Brasco elicits a reaction.