Donnie Brasco

Based on real events, Donnie Brasco follows an FBI agent who goes undercover inside a Brooklyn crime family in the late 1970s. Assuming the identity of a jewel dealer named Donnie Brasco, he cuts himself off from his wife and children to build a convincing criminal persona. His way in comes through Lefty Ruggiero, an aging mob fixer who trusts the younger man and treats him like a son. As the operation stretches on, the agent's loyalty is divided between the family he has joined and the life he left behind.

Mike Newell directed the film, which sits between Four Weddings and a Funeral and Pushing Tin in his filmography, from a screenplay by Paul Attanasio. Johnny Depp plays the agent and Al Pacino plays Lefty, with Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby, James Russo and Anne Heche among the supporting cast. A production budget of about 35 million dollars was met with a worldwide gross near 125 million, a strong return for a crime drama of its scale.

On IMDb the film holds 7.7 from roughly 355,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.5 from about 5,000 votes. A critics' rating of 8 out of 10 across 57 reviews places it at least on par with those audience scores, suggesting the film was received about as warmly by reviewers as by viewers.