DONNIE BRASCO holds up in the post-Sopranos world.

Rating: 8/10 (28 February 2010)

What was most striking re-watching DONNIE BRASCO at the end of the '00's, is how ahead of the Sopranos curve it was, particularly in terms of depicting the degrading day-to-day of a mobster. Sure, we've spent the better part of this decade watching Paulie Walnuts and Christopher Moltisanti struggle with the banal/evil duties of the family soldier, but Pacino's Lefty is avant garde of the whole Satriale's gang.
Two years before Tony took his crown, British director Newell came at the central issues of Los Sopranos – duty, alienation, and betrayal – with a calculated remove that an American shooter weaned on Scorsese and Coppola might not have been able to pull off. Witness a scene in which a very young-looking Paul Giamatti, playing an FBI surveillance technician, prods "Donnie" on the definitions of "fuggedaboutit" (a term that found new life as a t-shirt slogan during the Sopranos' heyday.) Newell, an outsider himself – and a bit of a chameleon, as established filmmakers go – succeeded in making a film that remains fascinating twelve years on, because it asks questions of Mafia culture, rather than revel in, or glorify it.
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-Greg