Review: "Donnie Brasco" & "The Devil's Advocate" (1997)

Read this blog long enough and you'll know that I'm a massive fan of Al Pacino, perhaps America cinema's greatest actor ever. He has given more brilliant performances on stage and screen than anyone can remember. In many ways, all actors live under his shadow, he has defined acting for his and all subsequent generations. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the movie that made Pacino a star, The Godfather, and the great thespian is still working, most recently in House of Gucci.

Godfather is the hallmark of early-era Pacino, Gucci being late-era Pacino. So that's why it's interesting to revisit two NYC-centric movies that Al Pacino made in 1997 -- Donnie Brasco and The Devil's Advocate -- that mark mid-era Pacino. 

Both movies are good -- not great -- but both show the huge range of the Bronx born actor.

In Donnie Brasco, Pacino plays Lefty, an aging, low-level NYC mafiso. He is befriended by a jewel thief named Donnie Brasco who, we learn very quickly, is actually an undercover FBI agent named Joe (played by Johnny Depp). Lefty takes Donnie under his wing, teaching him the ways of the mob and giving him lots of advice ("One broad, that's enough"). They try to get a club going in Florida -- yeah, that doesn't work out -- and they become part of a larger power struggle within the mob. These are guys who actually watched The Godfather but it couldn't be farther from their lives. How this ends, you can imagine -- but the bond between Lefty and Donnie is beautiful and tragic to watch.

Unlike many of his performances from this era, Pacino is very understated in this movie. He's mostly quiet except for when he feels offended. Lefty is a sad figure -- after 30 years in the mob, he has little in ways of power or money to show for it. He's scrapping by, still trying to prove himself. What makes Donnie Brasco so unlike most mob movies or TV shows (like Goodfellas, The Sopranos, even The Godfather movies), is that it makes life in the mob seem truly dreary and pressure-filled. Lefty and many of his cohorts aren't rich, they aren't dripping in bling or living in big houses or driving fancy cars, and, as indicated, not a lot of broads. They also spend all their time following orders and doing grunt work. It's a hand-to-mouth existence, and Pacino's deeply sensitive performance makes your heart ache for a man who has wasted his life for nothing -- although, as we realize, he probably didn't have anything else going for him either. This movie, and Pacino's performance, gets under your skin with its sad comment on humanity -- and it's also a master at the top his craft.

Then there's The Devil's Advocate. Long story short, it's a movie about how New York City is Hell and Al Pacino (playing a lawyer) is the Devil. A young hot-shot criminal lawyer from Florida named Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves playing smart for once) is tempted to NYC by Pacino's superlawyer John Milton (Get it? Paradise Lost!) to represent Milton's megafirm clients who get into criminal trouble. Milton assigns Kevin to a murder case involving a billionaire real-estate magnet (there's even a scene that was shot in Donald Trump's apartment before we fully realized that he was actually the Devil), and it sends Kevin down into a personal and moral tailspin that involves his shallow but vulnerable wife (played by a wonderful Charlize Theron in one of her first big movies). It climaxes with fire and brimstone Devil Al Pacino yelling -- A LOT -- especially about why God's prick ("He's a tight ass! ... Worship that? NEVAH'!"), and has a very suprising ending.

No critic will ever call this Pacino's best performance but, along with Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy, it's one of his most fun. Pacino is all id, all wildness, all attitude in this movie precisely because his character (El Diablo himself) is nothing but that. Pacino's greatest skill as an actor comes from the great depth of human feeling that he imbues his characters with -- here, because his character is the very anti-thesis of humanity, he make you sympathize, make you like, makes you want to keep hanging with the greatest evil ever. If the Devil existed, and he really was Al Pacino, doubtless we'd all become Satinists.

So I highly recommend these two mid-era Pacinos movie that show the immense range of his talent -- and you'll also be highly entertained.