Start the week with a film: In ‘Donnie Brasco’, betrayal is hard when Al Pacino is around

One of the best movies about the American Mafia was made by an Englishman. Mike Newell, whose filmography includes Four Weddings and a Funeral and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, brought to Donnie Brasco a welcome disinterest in swaggering Mafiosi and curiosity about the feelings of career criminals.

Martin Scorsese had already upended the self-important Mafia movie typified by The Godfather with his irreverent, energetic Goodfellas in 1990. Seven years later, Newell made Donnie Brasco, in which the wise guys seem less like ruthless gangsters and more like mid-level managers at a factory trying to work their way up.

Donnie (Johnny Depp) catches Lefty’s eye when he correctly identifies a fugazy, or a fake gem. Donnie isn’t genuine either. A Federal Bureau of Investigation undercover agent, Donnie is using Lefty to worm into one of the five Mafia clans that control the New York City rackets in the late 1970s.

Lefty is full of hot tips (“A moustache is against the rules,” he tells Donnie) and tall claims (he says he has scalped 26 men). Lefty matches his fellow gang members in their “Forget-about-it” banter but reveals his soft side at home, where he lolls around in velvet track pants and devours wildlife programmes.

For all his bragging, Lefty is a grunt, resentful at being passed over...

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