Donnie Brasco Critic Reviews

The true soul of the New York mob is portrayed in Donnie Brasco, a first-class Mafia thriller that is also in its way a love story -- perhaps director Mike Newell's best.Read the full review

One terrific movie... Pacino and Depp are a match made in acting heaven, riffing off each other with astonishing subtlety and wit.Read the full review

It's hard to think of another American film with this range of moods: satirical, sometimes hilarious, yet suffused with a sense of loss and riddled with the kind of violence that makes you recoil and lean forward simultaneously.Read the full review

Pacino cans the showboating bluster and gives a gently nuanced portrait of a simple man in decline.Read the full review

It's the electric interplay between Pacino and Depp that will make it a Mob movie classic.Read the full review

Crackling good... the best crime movie in a long while.Read the full review

The violence in this movie is gruesome (a scene involving the disposal of bodies is particularly graphic). But the movie has many human qualities and contains what will be remembered as one of Pacino's finest scenes.Read the full review

Perhaps the most impressive thing that Newell has done with Donnie Brasco is to cull an atypically low-key and introspective performance from Al Pacino, an actor known for manic, scenery-chewing efforts.Read the full review

The psychological dimensions of the story remain underrealized, but the loaded central premise and intimate focus the film sustains combine for a very involving and dramatic piece of crime lore.Read the full review