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Health & Fitness

The Mark of Zorro: Donnie Brasco and AMC's Mob Week

Remember when Johnny Depp played a normal person? Niether did I.

Alright so the AMC channel is hosting their annual Mob Week which is when a bunch of mob movies are shown for a week. The title pretty much explains what is going on. Anyway I am a big fan of mob movies.

To this day I don't think that I have seen a bad mob movie yet. Of course I haven't seen every single mob movie to date so I'm sure one of them is bad. Since I haven't seen every mob movie I wanted to cross another mob movie off the list, which is why I decided to watch Donnie Brasco. After watching Donnie Brasco I can still say that I haven't seen a bad mob movie yet.

So Donnie Brasco is the apparently true story about a FBI agent named Joseph Pistone (Johnny Depp) who is chosen to infiltrate the New York mafia. His cover name is none other than Donnie Brasco. In order to earn the mafia's trust and accpetance he uses the patronage of a pretty important mobster nicknamed Lefty (Al Pacino). Lefty and Donnie bond and Lefty decides to take Donnie under his win and represent him which basically means that Donnie is in.

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However during his six year stint as being part of the mafia he begins to gain a strong relationship between him and Lefty and identifies more with the life he lives as a gangster and less with the life he normally would live. So now Donnie begins to change and starts to become more of a gangster than a police officer family man, which is what he previously was.

One of the best things about this movie was simply that fact that this actually happened. For me movies that are based on true events are very interesting, especially true mob movies. Some examples of true mob movies that I can think of off the top of my head are Goodfellas and The Untouchables and those are grade A movies in my opinion. So even before writing the screenplay of this movie the writers already had a very interesting and entertaining idea to build off of.

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Along with its interesting story this movie was directed greatly. The direction was great because Mike Newell (the director of this movie and other movies like Four Weddings and a Funeral and Prince of Persia) made me feel like I was actually watching a classic mob movie.

This movie came out in 1997 and during that time new technologies were coming out that could make movie special effects and visual effects look better and sharper. However mob movies are not known for using a bunch of fancy looking CGI and effects like that. Mike Newell recognized this and just kept this movie simple effect wise which is how a mob movie should be.

Because of this I didn't feel like I was watching a movie that came out in 1997. In reality, it felt like I was watching a movie that came out in the late 80's which made it feel like a classic mob movie to me.

Yet another plus was the acting in this movie. Johnny Depp was actually playing a normal person in this movie. No not a guy with scissors for hands or a barber who kills people. Just a normal human being who is very conflicted. It sucks that he rarely plays normal roles because he is really good at playing one. Also, as I mentioned, Al Pacino was in it. Do I really need to say any more? The guy is the king of mob movies so you already knew before watching this movie that he was going to be great and he was.

In the supporting cast we have Michael Madsen as the cruel mob man Sonny Black. I usually don't like him that much with the exception of Reservoir Dogs but he was actually really good. His role fit him really well.

This movie had all of the makings of a great mob movie except for the fact that it wasn't very memorable. If someone were to ask me what I thought of The Untouchables I would probably respond with something like, "I thought it was great! I love the part that took place on the Canadian border when Sean Connery threw the grenade over the small cabin and it rolled down the roof and it landed right in front of a gangster. That was awesome!" Now if someone were to ask me what I thought of Donnie Brasco I would reply with just, "It was pretty good." I wouldn't go really go into any detail I would just state the thing I remember most about this which is that fact that it was good. I'm not saying that this movie was forgettable. I'm just saying that there was nothing that really made me think, wow, like most mob movies do.

Bottom line Donnie Brasco was a really good movie with great acting and even greater direction. Was it one of the top 10 mob movies of all time? In my opinion no it wasn't. More like top 15. So the lack of the Wow factor leaves me to give this movie a disappointing but still respectable B.

Have you seen Donnie Brasco? If so, let me know what you thought of it by commenting below.

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