The true story behind Donnie Brasco, starring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino

Mike Newell’s thriller can be seen again this evening on free-to-air television.

In reality, Joseph Dominick Pistone aka Donnie Brasco really existed.

This former FBI agent was one of the first to infiltrate the Mafia. Thanks to his knowledge and abilities, he was chosen in 1976 for a mission, which should have lasted six months. Thanks to Benjamin Ruggiero, known as Lefty, he managed to break into one of the known families of the New York mafia and have contact with the others… and his investigation ultimately lasted six years. Six years during which Donnie Brasco takes all the steps to integrate into the family, almost becoming “a freedman”. But its infiltration will stop just before then. A more than successful investigation for the FBI which had unfortunate consequences within the mafia. As well as on Joseph Pistone, who had to live under a false identity for the rest of his life, and wrote his memoirs: Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia, in 1988. It is this book which served as the basis for the film Donnie Brascoto be seen again this evening on France 5. Johnny Depp embodies it in the face of Al Pacino in Lefty.

The film of Mike Newell (Four Weddings, One Funeral, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire…) was a worldwide success when it was released in 1997, grossing $124 million worldwide.

The criticism of First also had been excited by the film and in particular by the interpretation of‘Al Pacino. Here is what Jean-Yves Katelan wrote when he left:

“Donnie Brasco is not yet another film about the mafia, but first of all a comedy, often so comical that one almost believes in pastiche: it’s difficult to forget that before this somewhat rubbish mafioso, Pacino was once Godfather… It is the excellence, even the perfection of the interpretation, which prevents pastiche, makes the dialogues so tasty and maintains a seriously funny suspense. Because, in the ranking of the best actor in the world, Al is clearly back in the lead: look at how he jumps imperceptibly – but perceptibly therefore – at each gunshot during a hysterical beating of Michaël Madsen… And his talent is communicative: you only have to see the following scene where Madsen, entering a “family” restaurant, provokes a huge burst of laughter at his boss’s table. At first shaken, he chooses to laugh with the others, but the look full of innuendo he gives at that moment is unforgettable. As for Johnny Depp, if he is still a little frail in the face of these two monsters, he nevertheless defends his role, difficult, of title hero progressively seduced by those he fights and who ends up finding his ass between two treacheries… “