Donnie Brasco (1997)

Lefty (Pacino) is a longtime earner in the New York mafia who notices, vets, and vouches for Donnie Brasco (Depp), who is actually undercover FBI agent Joe Pistone. Lefty is a true mentor to Donnie. He's almost always going out of his way to explain how things work -- both to ensure that Donnie doesn't embarrass him, but also because he seems to really care about the younger man.

Instead of enriching the story, the peeks into Joe's "real" life, consisting of a wife and three young daughters in suburbia, felt inconsequential. I didn't care about them in the same way that I cared about Lefty -- which seemed to mirror Pistone's own evolving feelings. Obviously those scenes were supposed to show us how brutal undercover work is on the family and the agent, but a flashback to Pistone in happier times might've helped us feel that.

This really hangs on Pacino's performance, and he delivers. We see him as a man whose every hope has been dashed, who would love to just escape but knows it's not a possibility. Brasco breathes new life into him -- Lefty dares to dream again -- but those dreams are short-lived. His final scene is a heart-breaker.

B+