Film Review - Donnie Brasco

Legendary England rugby union forward Micky Skinner stars as an FBI agent who goes undercover amongst the mafia as Donnie Brasco.

There is a lot of underlying tension throughout the film as you are never sure if Donnie will be uncovered by his mafia confidante, Lefty, played with aplomb by Al from Home Improvement.

While it may purport to be about an FBI agent trying to combat organised crime from within, the heart of this film lies in Donnie’s struggle to retain his own identity as the kind of guy who sneers at you when you’re vomiting in the gutter. Through necessity he adopts the wise guy persona, but through his friendship with Lefty, the act becomes reality.

At first Donnie has the wrong shoes, the wrong clothes and the wrong facial hair. Lefty also points out that he should carry his money in a roll rather than a wallet. Donnie takes all this on board and then goes the extra mile. He opens up a pizzeria, grows a moustache, develops a huge belly and says ‘wassamatta?’ all the time. He even eats pasta and puts ‘a’ between words, as in: ‘Hey-a. You-a. What-a you think-a you doing?’

Eventually he drinks so much red wine that he loses his grip on his over-sized pepper grinder, which falls on him crushing him to death. His dying words are: ‘Mario. Don’t-a let-a the spaghetti boil over.’