Donnie Brasco: Between Mafia and FBI, Johnny Depp and Al Pacino tell a true story
To be reviewed this Friday evening on France 5.
In reality, Joseph Dominick Pistone Alias Donnie Brasco really existed. This former FBI agent was one of the first to petre infiltrated in the mafia. Thanks to his knowledge and capacities, he was chosen in 1976 for a mission, which should have lasted six months. Thanks to Benjamin Ruggiero, known as Lefty, he will manage to introduce himself into one of the known families of the New York Mafia and to have contacts with the others … and his investigation will finally last six years. Six years in which Donnie Brasco has taken all the steps to integrate the family, until almost become “A freedman”. But its infiltration will stop just before. A more than successful investigation for the FBI which had unfortunate consequences within the mafia. As well as on Joseph Pistone, who must have lived under a false identity all the rest of his life, and wrote his memoirs: Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafiain 1988. It was this book that served as a basis for the film Donnie Brascoto review this evening on France 5. Johnny Depp embodies it in front of Al Pacino in Lefty.
Mike Newell’s film (Four weddings A burial, Harry Potter and the Fire Cup…) was a worldwide success, when it was released in 1997, totaling $ 124,909,762 in revenue. The criticism of First Also had been thrilled by the film and in particular by the interpretation of Al Pacino. Here is what Jean-Yves Katelan wrote when he was released: Donnie Brasco is not one more film on the mafia, but first of all a comedy, often so comical that you would almost think in the pastiche: difficult to forget that before this slightly zero mafia, Pacino was once godfather … It is the excellence, even the perfection of interpretation, which prevents pastiche, makes the dialogues so tasty and keeps a seriously funny suspense. Because, in the classification of the best actor in the world, Al ironing clearly in mind: look as he jumps imperceptibly – but perceptibly therefore – with each shot during a hysterical discharge from Michaël Madsen … and his talent is communicative: he is only to see the next scene or Madsen, penetrating in a restaurant “family” causes a huge burst of laughter at the table of his boss. First shaken, he chooses to laugh with the others, but the look full of innuendo that he throws at this 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 difficult role, of hero-title gradually seduced by those he fights and who ends up finding his ass between two treachery …
Just after this film, Arte will offer an unprecedented documentary on the latter entitled In Johnny Depp’s eyes. After His very successful portrait of Tom Cruise (the actor who runs after time and an eternal youth), the director Régis Brochier, accompanied by Céline Salette with the narration, traces the extraordinary course of the star of Caribbean piratesof his youth dreams to become a guitarist to his trial Resounding against his ex-wife, Amber Heard. The portrait of a punk artist who has ironically become a Hollywood star by tilting in spite of himself towards the cinema, and who enters two abuses of drugs and alcohol still designed an interesting filmography (thanks to John Waters and Tim Burton, in particular, but not only), but who ended up haunted by the ghosts of Marlon Brando and Hunter S. Thomson Parano and Rum Diary), isolated by its drifts and its delusional consumption of psychotropic drugs. This document does not overshadow his flaws, on the contrary, and he ends up on much less striking roles than before, showing that after so many excess, it is difficult to continue to build a solid filmography. At almost 60, is Depp’s career behind him, or could he finally overcome his demons and offer himself a comeback?
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