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Editor’s note: Greg Johnson will be appearing on the Decamaron Film Festival 2025 to discuss this very film. More information about the festival, including how to acquire your tickets, can be found here.
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Donnie Brasco (1997) is a paradox. It is a nearly perfect film, but I wouldn’t call it a great one. It is not great, because it does not aspire to greatness, merely to realism, but within these constraints, it creates a suspenseful and moving drama with a superb script by Paul Attanasio (who also wrote Quiz Show), perfect casting, outstanding performances, and tasteful music (period songs plus an excellent original score by Patrick Doyle). All are ably marshalled by English director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral), who is a surprising choice to direct a film about the Italian-American mafia.
Donnie Brasco can be viewed as a critique of a series of genuinely great mafia movies: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy. The Godfather both magnifies and mythologizes the mafia, basically by making it both good and beautiful. Coppola ascribes classical and chivalrous virtues to the mafia while aestheticizing its criminality and violence.
Donnie Brasco does not ennoble and prettify the mafia. Instead, we have a parade of crude, petty, backbiting, and disloyal criminals who occasionally descend into shocking, bloody savagery. In this, Donnie Brasco is very much like Martin Scorsese’s classic Goodfellas (1990), which also demythologizes the mob but still manages to attain an epic feel which Donnie Brasco avoids.
Donnie Brasco is a compelling study of character. How does one reveal character? By testing it in dramatic conflicts, the most compelling of which are moral conflicts affecting friends and family. Two of the central themes of Donnie Brasco are friendship and family: real friendship and family, and the fake, deeply dysfunctional friendships and family found in the mafia.
The setting is New York City and Miami in the late seventies and early eighties. The central characters are Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggiero (played by Al Pacino) and FBI Agent Joseph D. Pistone, who goes undercover in the mob under the name Donnie Brasco (Johnny Depp).
Pacino, who in The Godfather movies played Michael Corleone as a hero from a classical tragedy, plays Lefty Ruggiero as Willie Loman from Death of a Salesman. Lefty is a 50-something hood in the Bonanno crime family. At the start, he claims to have killed 26 men.
Lefty is a faithful soldier but a mediocre one. His career is stalled. Younger men are being promoted ahead of him, and he suspects it is because they are better than him.
Lefty drinks too much. He is perpetually broke and in debt. He lives in a crummy apartment. He is divorced, but he does have an attractive and agreeable girlfriend, Annette. His only child, Tommy, is a heroin addict. Frankly, Lefty is starting to look and feel like a loser.
Lefty is, in fact, the Bonanno family’s weak link, a chink in their armor. This may be why he was targeted by Agent Pistone, whose mission is to infiltrate the family and gather evidence to take them down.
Donnie Brasco is one of Depp’s best roles. He is inevitably upstaged by Pacino, but he holds his own and manages to make it work for the role, since Donnie’s mission is to become Lefty’s protégé, but without looking like he is trying too hard to ingratiate himself.
There are four important dramatic conflicts in Donnie Brasco.
First, Donnie cannot become part of the mob while keeping his hands clean. He must commit and be an accessory to crimes. At the very start, he beats up and steals the car of a guy who tries to pass off a fake diamond to pay a debt to Lefty. Later, he takes part in beatings and robberies. To maintain his cover, he assaults a Japanese waiter and a federal official. He also witnesses murders and is pressed into the gruesome work of disposing of corpses. By the time the movie ends, Donnie is expected to pull the trigger himself, killing the son of a rival gang boss.
Eventually, though, Donnie’s gangster behavior goes above and beyond what is necessary for his job. When a club in Florida is raided by the local police, Donnie uses it as cover to steal $300,000 in cash from the mob. In an argument about the money, he strikes his wife (a young and elfin Anne Heche).
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Second, when Lefty vouches for Donnie and brings him into the family, it is clear that Lefty will be killed if and when it is revealed that Donnie is a federal agent. The problem is that Donnie and Lefty become friends. Lefty’s son is a disappointment, so Donnie becomes a surrogate son. Also, it seems like Lefty is becoming a surrogate father, especially if Donnie’s story of growing up in an orphanage in Florida is true. When Donnie comforts Lefty while his son clings to life from an overdose, Lefty flat out says, “I love you, Donnie.” This is a hard thing for a wise guy to say. It is a moving scene, beautifully played by Pacino and Depp.
Third, Donnie has a wife and three daughters, whom he seldom sees because of his job. I could have done with less female drama, but it effectively illustrates a larger conflict: between one’s real family and the mafia’s version of “family”: namely a bunch of lowlifes who may be called upon to kill their best friend at any moment.
I will explore the fourth conflict, between Donnie and his FBI colleagues, later.
All of these conflicts generate suspense, but the greatest suspense is whether Donnie will be outed as a mole and a snitch.
Donnie Brasco portrays the mob as grotesque, petty, and self-defeating. The Bonanno boss is assassinated by Sonny Red, one of his skippers, who then becomes top Bonanno. This allows Sonny Black (Michael Madsen), and his crew to move up in the organization, skipping over Lefty, who has seniority but is regarded as less capable and reliable.
Unfortunately, Sonny Black is now on the hook for $50,000 a week to Sonny Red. But his crew are strictly small timers: ripping off parking meters and steak knives and tickets to Chaka Khan concerts. Soon, Sonny Black is melting down and lashing out at his crew. Lefty starts looking for an exit.
When Lefty tries to go into business for himself with a nightclub in Florida, he sets up a meeting to secure the blessing of the local crime boss, Santo Traficante. But his project is usurped by Sonny Black, who wants more independence from Sonny Red. Sonny Black also promotes Donnie over Lefty, which sours their friendship for a while.
But as soon as the nightclub is up and running, it is raided by the local police. Sonny Black and his crew suspect a snitch in their ranks. They all become paranoid, and Donnie—who up until this point had ice water in his veins—starts getting nervous.
They are mistaken, however, for they were betrayed by Santo Traficante as a favor to Sonny Red in New York, who did not want Sonny Black going into business for himself, even though Sonny Red would receive a handsome cut, the first installment of which was the missing $300,000 in cash.
You see, Sonny Red is more fearful than greedy. He engineered the raid to give himself an excuse to kill Sonny Black and his whole crew, because he feared their desire for independence. Sonny Black, however, catches wind of their plan, and in the film’s most brutal sequence, kills Sonny Red and two of his henchmen.
Donnie Brasco depicts the whole mafia ethos as deeply pathological and self-defeating. If you want a stable organization, you need to respect and reward people at all levels, not just at the top. Lefty feels like a loser because, like everyone in the organization, he expects to be promoted beyond his level of competence, whereas a functional organization would have honored and compensated him for staying in the role he does best. Otherwise, you induce a scramble to the top, which means that leaders live in constant fear of being betrayed by their underlings. It’s no way to run a business.
Frankly, the FBI doesn’t come off much better. From early in the film, Donnie evidently has a conflict with his superiors at the FBI. Initially, this conflict seems unmotivated, which is a small flaw, but eventually, it becomes plausible. His colleagues and superiors are smug, slovenly, and deeply unethical. His superiors are rather careless of his personal safety, asking him to vouch for another agent, which could get Donnie killed. Donnie also feels underappreciated. Although two lowly FBI technicians compliment Donnie on his work, his superiors prefer to keep him in suspense. Finally, at the end of the movie, Donnie is commended for risking his life to bring down the mob. He receives a medal and the princely sum of $500. But the whole episode is rushed and perfunctory, more of a photo op than a ceremony. They even mispronounce his last name.
Donnie knows that Lefty will be killed for vouching for an FBI mole. Thus Donnie tries save Lefty’s life by getting him to retire and leave town, offering him the stolen $300,000 in cash as an inducement.
By contrast, after the FBI extracts Donny, two of its agents march into Sonny Black’s lair and show him proof that Donnie was an agent. But they do not arrest anyone. Instead, they leave them at large, which seals Lefty’s fate.
The scene in which Lefty is “sent for”—basically, to show up for his own execution—is touchingly played to perfection by Pacino. He tells his girlfriend not to wait up for him, then he leaves his valuables behind, including his last $5 in cash, so his “friends” don’t steal them off his dead body. He knows how this goes, because he has done it to his “friends” as well.
The contrast between mafia friendship (“friends of ours”) and true friendship (“friends of mine”) is central to the movie. These gangsters know nothing of friendship, just petty backbiting and backstabbing. They are also insufferably rude and noisy, with infantile braying, bawling voices.
Donnie Brasco is based on a true story, and a cursory glance at the real narrative reveals how artful Paul Attanasio’s script is. The true story is far more sordid but far less dramatic than the movie. For instance, the real Lefty Ruggiero was arrested and ended up spending 15 years behind bars.
Donnie Brasco is a beautifully crafted and emotionally compelling film which rewards repeated viewing. It deserves a place of honor alongside the mafia classics by Coppola and Scorsese.
19 comments
Excellent review. As with all movies that are based on a true story you always have to wonder how much of it is. I’ve seen interviews with Joe Pistone and did a little fact checking on line. Most of the film is accurate. I agree with you. Definitely a film worth checking out.
Fred C. Dobbs: December 3, 2025 Excellent review. As with all movies that are based on a true story you always have to wonder how much of it is…
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Donnie Brasco may be an entertaining crime movie, based on a true story, but that’s because it is not racial, like The Order film released a year ago that also was claimed to be based on a true story. Not. It turned out to be biased against those White revolutionists who could have just as easily been portrayed as protagonists instead of evil. See Ondrej Mann’s review, of The Order movie earlier this year on C-C under which I made this comment:
“This type of film is always made with the aim of discrediting white nationalism (WN) and portraying it as a gang of terrorists and violent criminals… We cannot expect any mainstream film to directly quote William Luther Pierce: Who Rules America? That would be extremely naïve…” –Ondrej Mann, quoted for truth.
The Hollywood film industry in generally anti-White. Fact!
Put ‘Hollywood’ in NV’s search block and find lovely articles like this one: “Hollywood Jews: Pure Bloodlust and Hatred for White People” at nationalvanguard.org.
While we’re on the subject of Hollywood movies, here’s something for newbies:
I just noticed a book in my personal library that I hadn’t cracked in a while. It’s title is An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews invented Hollywood by the Hollywood Jew insider, Neal Gabler, the 1989 edition. We used to sell it but it’s been out of stock for a while and purchasing in bulk is prohibitive, if it’s even available. My copy has a bookmark in it on page 364, so I read and transcribed that page, below.
Lead-in, Gabler tells of non-Jew producer Sam Wood who had been planning to expose all of those suspected communists on Hollywood, many of whom were Jews:
… Wood decided to organize like-minded people into a new group.The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals was announced in February 1944. “The American motion picture industry is, and will continue to be , held by Americans for the American people, in the interest of America and dedicated to the preservation and continuance of the American scene and the American way of life,” Wood declared. Though Wood didn’t use the word “Christian” the way [Mississippi congressman John] Rankin [Who was instrumental in continuing the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee)] did, and though Jewish screenwriter Morrie Ryskind was a member, the Alliance did have its anti-Semitic tinge. Among its officers were McGuinness, a snobbish anti-Semite, and Walt Disney, whose company refused to hire Jews* The Jewish executives, who must have suspected that the alliance was as much an attempt to realign power in Hollywood as to exorcize Reds, didn’t join. More, they attempted to disarm it. Shortly after the war the Alliance presented them with evidence of Communist infiltration. The Jews called a meeting at Hillcrest. “Who were the Communists in the industry? Name names, they demanded. Pressed,, one of the speakers mentioned the son of one of MGM’s leading producers as a ringleader in the Soviet group. It was an unfortunate reference, for all the elder statesmen around the investigating table had known this lad as a schnook from the day he was born. Sam Goldwyn got to his feet. ‘If this snot-nosed baby is the Red boss in Hollywood, gentlemen, we’ve got nothing to fear. Let’s go home.’ The meeting broke up.”
It soon became clear that they had much more to fear, in fact, from the Alliance. Since its formation it had repeatedly invited HUAC to Hollywood to investigate not only Communist propaganda itself, but the “flagrant manner in which the motion picture industrialists of Hollywood had been coddling Communists.” Now, with Roosevelt’s death, with a Republican Congress, with the beginning of the Cold War, with a series of bitter labor disputes in Hollywood, the Alliance had asked again, and this time HUAC had accepted. Virtually all of Huac’s witnesses during Thomas’s visit in May were members of the Alliance, and most of them, on the available evidence, confirmed the Alliance’s worst suspicions.
As for the Hollywood Jews’ worst suspicions, those were confirmed, too. What was now arayed against them in the summer of 1947 was an unholy alliance of HUAC, its neo-fascist supporters, and extreme gentile reactionary elements within Hollywood. (Lest there have been any doubt, and there couldn’t have been much, Robert Stripling, HUAC’s new counsel, was a southern white supremacist who had previously assisted Ernest Sullivan, a former publicist for the Bund.) Still, most of the Jewish executives remained remarkably sanguine. At a meeting a few weeks after Thomas’s closed-door sessions, Eric Johnston, the recently appointed president of the Motion Picture Association of America, proposed that the studio heads themselves not to employ any suspected Communists. They demurred….
Read more in the book. My highlight the part about Disney, the footnote reads:
*When David Swift, a longtime Disney employee, accepted a job at Columbia, Disney snapped in a Jewish accent, “Okay, Davy Boy, off you go to work with those Jews. It’s where you belong, with those Jews.” (Leonard Mosley, Disney’s World [New York, 1985, p. 207.)
For a better understanding of what happened to the only non-Jew studio in Hollywood after Walt died, don’t go to Neal Gabler, but to nationalvanguard.org where there are several essays, like this one by William Pierce from 30 years ago: “Disney and the Jews: Eisner and His Kind Must Stop Harming Our Children”
WE’VE SPOKEN about the Jewish control of the news and entertainment media before, but it’s a matter of such urgency that we need to talk about it again and again. It is absolutely essential for us to understand who controls our mass media and how they use their control to undermine America. (ILLUSTRATION: a Jewish peddler as seen in an early Disney cartoon; The Three Little Pigs)
Very recently a major rearrangement in the media world took place when the Walt Disney company paid $19 billion to take control of Capital Cities/ABC, the company that owns the ABC television network. That makes the Disney company the biggest of the media conglomerates. And it makes the man who controls Disney, Michael Eisner, the most powerful media boss in the world.
What does this mean for the future of our people? Should we be concerned that the company which brought us Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Snow White will in the future be playing a much bigger role in forming the opinions of American television viewers and setting the moral and cultural standards of our nation?
I’ll answer that question: Yes, we certainly should be concerned, because the Walt Disney company is not what it used to be. It has been transformed from a wholesome producer of children’s entertainment into a malign instrument of subversion, whose purpose is to weaken and destroy our people….
…The real problem, of course, was that Walt Disney’s vision of the world, as reflected in the films he produced, was wholly different from that of the Jewish film producers around him. As long as Walt was making Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck cartoons, this problem could be overlooked. When he began animating feature-length fairy tales like Snow White and Cinderella, the Jews in Hollywood became increasingly nervous. The world of Snow White was an entirely White world, a European world. It stirred racial memories in White Americans, and the aim of the Jewish media bosses then as now was to make White Americans forget their roots. They wanted to begin promoting multiculturalism as soon as the Second World War was over, and Walt was in their way. They couldn’t push racial mixing in their films and have someone as popular as Walt Disney refuse to go along: the contrast would be obvious to the public. Even Disney’s extremely popular Nature films were resented by the rest of Hollywood. Films which promoted a love for animals and the natural world were viewed with suspicion by men whose view of life was entirely economic and urban.
These may seem like subtle differences, and in fact most people outside of Hollywood were oblivious to the ideological and cultural conflict between Walt Disney and the other film producers. The closest that the conflict came to attracting public attention was during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Walt Disney’s total lack of sympathy for Communism and his refusal to let Communist propaganda be introduced into any of his productions set him apart from the rest of Hollywood. While Walt was alive, however, there wasn’t much that Hollywood could do about him. He was too popular with the American people.
After Walt died in 1966, however, the situation changed. His company had depended on his genius for its prosperity, and without him it had a difficult time keeping up with the competition. After Disney company profits had declined for several years, Jewish corporate raiders Saul Steinberg and Irwin Jacobs moved in for the kill. In 1984, after Steinberg had milked the company of $32 million, Disney family shareholders were too weak to resist a takeover by Michael Eisner, the Jewish boss of Paramount Pictures. Eisner in turn brought in as his second in command another Jew, Jeffrey Katzenberg. The company that Walt Disney built — the company that gave us Snow White and Fantasia — has been in Jewish hands ever since.
During his first day as chairman of the Disney company — his first day, believe it or not — Eisner ordered the production of an R-rated film, about the kinky sexual misadventures of a typically neurotic Jewish family in the Los Angeles area. This was the first R-rated film ever produced by the Disney company — but certainly not the last….
Read the rest of the story at the link. Interestingly, I just discovered that Neal Gabler authored a 2006 book, Walt Disney: Triumph of the American Imagination. It’s available on Amazon for $47 and up in hardback, but just $17 and up in paperback. I’ll purchase a copy, read then donate it to the William Luther Pierce Memorial Library.
My comments about the movie The Friends of Eddie Coil was meant as a single post that I made. For some reason it was posted twice, once in a reply to your comments. If anything, at least we favor movies that have an all white cast. That is one of the reasons that I’m somewhat partial to the TMC channel.
Jewish film executives and moguls will occasionally let their guard down and brag about running Hollywood, however, when a non-Jew mentions that they control Hollywood, all hell breaks loose. The actor Marlin Brando is a good example. When he was alive, he admitted that Jews control Hollywood during an interview with Larry King. The following day he gave an apology for saying that and was upset when he made the apology.
Bigfoot: December 6, 2025 Jewish film executives and moguls will occasionally let their guard down and brag about running Hollywood, however, when a non-Jew mentions that they control Hollywood, all hell breaks loose. The actor Marlin Brando is a good example. When he was alive, he admitted that Jews control Hollywood during an interview with Larry King.
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That admission by Marlon Brando to Larry King (born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger to Orthodox Jews in the Soviet Union) was covered by William Pierce nearly 25 years ago, as a man of his race, here, “Men of Valor” at nationalvanguard.org:
by Dr. William L. Pierce
SEVERAL WEEKS ago the actor Marlon Brando was interviewed on a television talk show, and he got a little careless. He blurted out something which everyone in the media and in show business knows, but which no one is supposed to say. Marlon Brando said that Jews own and run Hollywood, and that they run it for their own benefit: they run it to suit themselves and no one else. The films they make portray other ethnic groups unfavorably, but the Jews portray themselves only in the most favorable light.
Well, sir, what else is new? Next someone will be announcing that the earth goes around the sun!
You know, that’s a funny thing: the Jews and their allies reacted to Brando’s statement about the way the Christian church reacted 400 years ago to Galileo’s statement about the relationship between the earth and the sun. They screamed for Brando’s blood. And at the same time they tried to obscure the issue and distract people’s attention away from the central point: namely, the Jewish control of the media.
They called Brando an “anti-Semite.” They began wailing about the so-called “Holocaust.” They stepped up their demands for laws against what they like to call “hate speech.”…
… They yelled “anti-Semitism” and trotted out their favorite gas-chamber stories. Weren’t six million enough? they moaned. So much hate! They acted as if the simple statement of truth about their control of Hollywood were an act of persecution, and that anyone who didn’t immediately blot it from his mind were an “anti-Semite.”
Now, this sort of behavior — this pretense of shocked and wounded innocence — has worked wonderfully for the Jews for the past 50 years. They’ve been able to intimidate most people into keeping their mouths shut most of the time. They have made the average American so afraid of being labeled a “racist” or an “anti-Semite” that they have been able to enforce their own code of Political Correctness: a code under which one may say nothing about a Jew except an expression of praise or sympathy.
It’s a fascinating situation. They’ve been able to enforce this code, under which no one may say that they control the media, only because they do control the media: it is their control of the media which gives them the power to enforce their code of Political Correctness on the public. And they certainly have most of the public buffaloed.
Or do they? They raised such a fuss about Marlon Brando’s comments earlier this month that an Internet poll was taken to find out what the public reaction to the fuss was. One of the major Internet access providers, Prodigy, took the poll, and the results were encouraging. The Prodigy poll found that despite all of the Jewish screaming about Brando’s comments being “anti-Semitic,” half of those polled didn’t think what Brando had said was anti-Semitic at all, but was a simple statement of fact. Jews do give themselves especially favorable treatment in Hollywood films, they said.
Yes, it is encouraging to learn that despite all the media brainwashing 50% of the public hasn’t been fooled. That raises my estimate of the public’s intelligence and power of perception.
Now, if that 50% would be willing to stand up and say in public what they will say in an anonymous poll, my estimate of the public’s character and courage also would be raised — and so would my hopes for the future of our people.
You know, it is important to be intelligent and perceptive. It is important not to be fooled by our enemies; it is important to be able to see through their lies and deception. But it is more important — much more important — to have courage and to be honorable in one’s behavior. It is important to have valor. That’s something which is sadly lacking in America today, I’m afraid. Despite what Mr. Brando said, I’m not inclined to give him credit for much valor; I’m inclined to believe that he had a few martinis in him when he gave that interview, because the next day he was groveling and apologizing…
What’s really unfortunate is that we don’t have a valorous ruling class in America to provide leadership and to set standards for others. Without such a class the country cannot long survive…
… We do have a ruling class of sorts, of course; there is always a ruling class of some type. But the men who rule America today are certainly not men of valor. They are lawyers, bureaucrats, rich businessmen, scribes and Pharisees.
They are men without ideology, men whose only fixed principle is always to do what is advantageous for themselves. And, in a sense, they are the “best” of their type: that is, they have worked harder, been smarter and meaner, and hewed more closely to the party line — to the established body of cant — than those who didn’t make it to the top. The “fittest” in any society survive and prosper.
But valor, unfortunately, does not seem to have survival value in 20th-century American society — at least, not the kind of valor which we remember fondly from bygone centuries. What would an old-fashioned Yankee or a Southern gentleman do in today’s America? How would he react upon encountering a Black male swaggering down the sidewalk with a White woman on his arm? Suppose he came face to face on the street with one of the filthy creatures who has made a career in politics, the media, or the pulpit by helping to bring about the state of affairs in which White women dare to be seen in public on the arms of Blacks. How long could a valorous man stay out of prison?
The best men today know that they are living in enemy-occupied territory, and upon such a sidewalk encounter they only grit their teeth and pass in silent rage, while the worst display an ingratiating smile…
Read more of one my favorite speeches by Dr. Pierce at the link. Now, back to Jews’ stranglehold on the American film industry.
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Douglas Mercer, presently Number 62 on C-C’s Top 100 Commenters list brought to our attention five years ago how Jews used the popularity of non-Jew singer and “anti-racist” movie star Frank Sinatra in what might well be the most pro-Jew, anti-White piece of propaganda to ever appear on celluloid. See it here, “The Biggest Lie” on nationalvanguard.org:
by Douglas Mercer
IN 1945 RKO Pictures (the creation of a Jew from Russia) foisted a bit of vile propaganda on the American people, a short film starring Frank Sinatra called The House I Live In. (At 30, Sinatra was then the center of “Sinatramania” and was idolized by millions of teenagers and young people. The film, though only a one-reeler, would have drawn large audiences on the basis of his name alone.)
The writer and director of this piece of trash were both Jews; none of the families of the executives who produced it had been in America longer than fifty years.
This did not stop them from telling real Americans what America “really was.”
It’s the biggest lie.
This short movie is about the “melting pot,” the “American Creed,” the notion of the “proposition nation,” of America as “an idea, not a people” — about “Americanization.”
Americanization is supposedly the process whereby alien races become Americans. But it is really nothing but racial poisoning, and Americanization is thus a gross misnomer; it is doublespeak; Americanization is really de-Americanization.
Jews have always wanted to mongrelize the in-group until the in-group is no more.
When the film was made these ideas were circulating in elite circles, in textbooks of the 1930s where cultural pluralism was supplanting settler ideology, in Gunnar Myrdal’s attack on White America in the “anti-racist” An American Dilemma (1944).
The film starts out with a gang of boys chasing another boy and cornering him. Just at the fateful moment a wide-eyed Sinatra steps in to defend the cornered boy.
The gang says that they don’t like the boy’s religion, one calls him a “dirty –” but Sinatra cuts him off before he can say “Jew.”
Here is the first Jewish sleight of hand. Immediately the conflict between Whites and Jews is made one of “religion” rather than what it is in fact, one of race.
It’s the biggest lie….
Who knew? Read more and view the short, sensationalistic propaganda film at the link.
I’ve always had a curiosity about the life of Walt Disney. Wasn’t even aware of this book. I’ll be picking it up.
Uncle Semantic: December 7, 2025 I’ve always had a curiosity about the life of Walt Disney. Wasn’t even aware of this book. I’ll be picking it up.
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Good. Satisfy your curiosity, Unc. You are probably too young to have been raised on wholesome Disney films and cartoons like we baby boomers.
I was attending Infantry OCS (Officer Candidate School) at Fort Benning, Georgia (not PC Fort Moore) in December of 1966 when our beloved Walt died. We were practically sequestered to our quarters during training and had little contact with the outside world — no radio, TV or even print media.
When we officer candidates were released to go home for a few days for Xmas I remember being shocked when back home to learn he had died without my knowledge.
NV has several essays about his life and how Jews were finally able to take over what Walt, the racially responsible “anti-Semite” (actually anti-Jew), had built for American moviegoers.
Really interesting review. Good to see Trevor lynch again—I was getting worried about him! I recall seeing Donnie Branco in the theatre, and I liked it a lot but I’m not sure I saw it ever again… I thought the point was that Lefty was a better person than the other mobsters and ironically that was his weakness in that it made him susceptible to Donnie, who was also a higher sort of person. There was the symbol of lefty watching the Discovery Channel with the Lions on the Savannah, if you recall, and that symbolized his relationship with these mafiosas. He’s watching wild animals in these criminals, and as they say, if you sup with lions, you better have a long spoon!
edit: also when the cops raid the club wasn’t it lefty who first put together it must have been an inside job…see he’s smarter than the other mobsters too.
Great article, this movie was reviewed on this site about ten years ago, is this the same article? I wonder why Johnny Depp never won an Oscar, he possesses superfluous acting ability. Have you thought about reviewing American Graffiti? It was discussed here back in March, or April, but it never materialized. 🙃
We have never run a review of Donnie Brasco.
I’m glad this movie got reviewed. It always piqued my interest since the real Sonny Red and two Bonanno capos were murdered in the neighborhood I grew up. Johnny Depp is a better actor than he’s given credit for and his role as pistone was excellent. The scene in the Japanese restaurant and him barely bullshitting his way out of being murdered I remember being a nail-biter. Always liked the late Michael Madsen as well; he was a cool actor.
I enjoyed reading this review and especially TL’s comparing it to The Godfather movies here:
Donnie Brasco can be viewed as a critique of a series of genuinely great mafia movies: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy. The Godfather both magnifies and mythologizes the mafia, basically by making it both good and beautiful. Coppola ascribes classical and chivalrous virtues to the mafia while aestheticizing its criminality and violence.
“Mafioso” (1962, starring Alberto Sordi) is a mafia film which some of you may never have heard of. The crucial part of the plot is singular and unexpected, but that’s only half of what makes this movie a very good piece of entertainment. The scenes of a settled and successful Sicilian now living in northern Italy with a blond northern Italian wife meeting her husband’s family for the first time, back in the ol’ country, are priceless. From a review:
Released in 1962, Alberto Lattuada’s Mafioso is a strikingly original blend of dark comedy, social commentary, and crime drama. Starring the legendary Alberto Sordi, the film offers a unique exploration of Italy’s cultural divides, the complexities of Sicilian identity, and the insidious reach of the Mafia. While it is often categorized as a black comedy, Mafioso defies simple classification, moving fluidly between humor, suspense, and tragedy.
Thanks, this sounds like a film I need to see.
I believe that Mafioso is still available on Criterion.
A good movie about organized crime that I would recommend is a 1973 film, The Friends of Eddie Coyle. While not a true story, it has similar themes to Donnie Brasco. The movie is set in Boston and is about criminal gang that is a part of the Irish Mafia. Like Donnie Brasco, members of the mafia are portrayed as crude and unsophisticated. Robert Mitchum is the main character, Eddie Coyle. Like Al Pacino’s character in Donnie Brasco, Eddie Coyle is a low-level member of the mafia who can’t seem to get promoted and how he deals with it causes him problems. Since the movie is about illegal gun running, the ATF, as opposed to the FBI, is the federal agency that deals with this part of the Irish mafia. The ATF is also shown to have a few internal flaws as well. TCM will play the film occasionally. By the way, it has an all-white cast.
in real life if you can believe they didnt kill Lefty
Yeah, because in real life, they were all arrested before they did.
So I watched it again—incredible movie! You have to understand i had only watched it once maybe 30 years ago when I was like 15. But I reenforced my idea that the point is that Lefty is a higher sort of person. For example, he also is the only one who realizes that the ship they entertained on was a federal ship, if you notice. He can know true personal loyalty and affection, whereas the others can’t. The animal wildlife metaphor is extended, which I guess is also kabbalistic(he represents the boat man, apparently, cf the new order song Slow Jam) but the idea is that he’s like a caged lion, boxed in this criminal life that he can’t escape from.
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