Donnie Brasco is the autobiographical account of real-life ex-FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone, based on his 1988 book, Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia. Pistone spent six years undercover in the mob during the late seventies under the alias Donnie Brasco, reaping several hundred convictions as a result of his eventual testimony.

The portrayal of the mob in Donnie Brasco is distinctly unglamorous, and that is what makes it so interesting. Movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas tell grandiose stories of the rise and fall of key figures at the highest levels of the mob, but Donnie Brasco tells the story of the mob equivalent of Willy Loman, a man who, in the words of English director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral), "works for a dream all his life but at the end finds all he has is a cheap, gold plated watch."

 

The Loman figure in this case is Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino), the man Pistone (Johnny Depp) befriends and uses as a stepping stone for all his major infiltrations. Lefty is so lonely and eager to become a mentor for someone that he practically falls into Pistone's lap. Pistone, pretending to be a jeweler, proceeds to earn Lefty's trust by convincing him that his newly purchased diamond is actually a fake. Lefty is surprised because he is convinced that the diamond must be real. Lefty doesn't know that his skills of appraisal are equally lacking on humans as they are on diamonds.