Donnie Brasco: The Gangster Film You Needed.

If you were to ask me to make a list of the all time greatest gangster films I'd run off The Godfather pt II, Goodfellas, The Public Enemy, and Donnie Brasco. Mike Newell's film - based on the true story of FBI agent Joe Pistone's infiltration of the Bonnano mafia family , under the alias of Donnie Brasco - doubles as one of the great undercover films largely because of its nuanced look at what the work would do to anyone, and because it features one of Johnny Depps finest performances as said undercover agent. But while I think what it has to say about that particular work has been said or done before in films like The Departed, and Deep Cover. What it has to say about life in organized crime, how it depicts that life, is something we hadn't really seen before, and not much after. I may actually watch other films of the genre more ( Scarface, White Heat, Casino, and of course two of the three Godfather's) but while I don't watch it as much as those films, I feel very passionately that what Brasco manages to do that almost no other gangster film has done this well, is make these people, this life seem completely unattractive (which is saying a lot considering how handsome Johnny Depp is in it). It doesn't normalize the racism, violence, and paranoia, it makes it look very normie, cumbersome, mediocre. It doesn't have any of the feel of a winning formula (even if for a time) one can siphon off from other films in the genre. This not to say its the mission of those films to do so, but rather there is something to say in talking about the place characters like Vito, Michael, Sam Rothstein, Tony Montana, and Tommy DeVito have occupied in hyper-masculine circles ( such as Hip Hop). If the gangster film (intentionally or not) made the environment and people look like a 300 dollar pair of slacks, Donnie Brasco puts them in “Dad” jeans. Crews and bosses seem petty, tacky and cheap. Prone to bouts of furious delusions of grandeur they stomp about town carrying out heinous acts for no other reason than percieved disrespect. This about actual disparaging, or defamatory remarks made over a shoe shine job when one was a kid. In one scene Donnie, (Johnny Depp) Sonny Black, (Michael Madsen) and his gang viciously beat up an Asian restaurant employee merely doing his job in a bathroom and it's not the cooled honorific hate in other gangster movies where they say things like “Give the drugs to the niggers their animals anyway” which is more distant, and less visceral, and mostly about them and their staunch belief in their own supposedly superior ethics than their hatred, - it's a messy, cruel, up close hot blooded bit of nasty raw racism that a cop uses to get out of being found out because even though he doesn't know to what degree, he knows it's the button to press to get the desired effect.

The violence and the politics are made to look messy, to look like hard work, to look like stress, because, (along with the also underrated Road to Perdition), Donnie Brasco is a gangster film for and about the working class, that remains about the working class. While it's counterparts are significantly about an expressway out of the blue collar life. It is not the cops and robbers film that is The Untouchables. Pistone is not Elliot Ness, a straight laced do- gooder dedicated to his job out of a moral superiority (for that matter neither was the actual Ness). Director Mike Newell’s film is neither a total indictment of the path, nor a rousing accidental exaltation of gangsterdom, merely a stern, gripping, stare into the bare face of that life, and it all starts with it's penetrative look at it's central character Lefty Ruggiero.

Ruggiero is a bit of everything to this film. He is it's conscious. It's reckoning, it's soul. Lefty is not only undercover Detective Joe Pistone’s way into the heart of the mafia, but our way into the heart of the movies central themes. Understanding what makes Lefty different from anything else we've seen from a crime syndicate figure on film is key to understanding why the film is different from anything we've seen in crime syndicate films. Up until this movie, the American gangster on film is one of the purest of white American male fantasies on screen. Although they were usually anti-establishment, anti- authority figures, the gangster would still none-the-less be the flip side of a mirror image of the establishment hard-working American who rises to the top by way of ethics, attitude, ingenuity, and talent. That they functioned outside the purview of the law did little to disrupt the institutional philosophy, it just made them a whole lot more interesting, and desirable. Up until Donnie Brasco these men we're presented largely as reliable narrators of their own rise to power. How they saw themselves was exactly in essence how we were going to see them. They were men of indomitable wills, they were tough, intelligent, and ladies men. They lived lavishly from goon to kingpin and along their rise to power came to enjoy the best of things. Though all of the great films of the genre would also interrogate the underside of the fantasy, they would also engage in portions of it. The Scarface movies showcased their lust for power, Godfather romanticized their codes of honor, Goodfellas the brotherhood. They were all tragic figures, but the tragedy was the fall of the empire, or that none of it was ever real in the first place. Then comes Lefty Ruggiero, and Brasco where the tragedy is futility, of these men's lives, of Donnie Brasco's work. All of this to get out of a lifestyle (working class) that for the most part they are still in. There is no rise to power for Lefty, his gang, or his protege in Brasco. No honor or true sense of brotherhood amongst these theives. They are all willing to berate, betray or kill one another for a dream which will never be realized for any of them. Their lust for power is not attractive, or ambitious, but ugly and small. It is not a story of rise and fall by way of strength and weakness, but simply an ongoing tale of mediocrity and ruin, and Lefty is at the center of all of it. There are no tailored three piece suits, and gorgeous lapels and colors as in Casino, but hideous track suits, and mismatch outerwear. There are no palatial villas, stately mansions, or even quaint track homes, merely small cramped apartments with tacky furniture. Lefty is not an avatar for white alpha male potency and supremacy, but the sad sack reality of an average moe scraping and scratching for a seat at the table. He is a hypochondriac, and a liar, not particularly smart or ingenous, and prone to overstating his importance. He is also a loving father, an at least a decent husband, and a loyal friend, not as an act but as a character trait. It's maybe Pacino's most sympathetic and pathetic role since Panic in Needle Park and Dog Day Afternoon. There's his patent sadness round the eyes, less posture, but always posturing. There is a scene maybe Midway through the film that exemplifies all of this where Lefty is in the hospital anxiously awaiting word on the condition of his son, an addict who has OD'd. As Lefty begins to emote just a little over his son, he begins to show sincere signs of guilt, of recognition, of vulnerability, and you can tell his son is a source of deep pain for Lefty but you don't know exactly how much until suddenly, Pacino lets out this gut wrenching whimper. It’s not long and he immediately composes himself, but it's a level of being right there in that exact place, in that exact emotion that has a degree of difficulty for an actor on the same level as Denzel's single tear in Glory, and it's indicative of the kind of lived in acting Pacino commits to the entire movie.

Pacino plays Lefty as a small man, with a bigger heart than he lets on. A character with traits that resemble a loyal dog with a mixture of bite and bark, who chooses to bark more than bite. One who doesn't have much heft, but likes to throw his weight around, and Pacino makes it a literal part of physicality. He tosses weight from one side of his body to the other while walking, and talking. His constant anxiety is transmitted into Pacino's many repetitions. Chain smoking cigarettes, appearing ready to ash a cigarette, but returning to his mouth as if by compulsion. Repeating words and sentences, rhetorical questions repeated at least twice. A quarter turn in the hospital hallway directly followed by another. A longing look to the boss for some form of acknowledgement, directly followed by another, like someone checking the mailbox twice for that important piece of mail they've been waiting on...

Ultimately what becomes vital to understanding Pacino's Ruggiero is nothing other than existing in the current state of perpetual unease in the American economy. Lefty is not a trumped up , souped up Lamborghini version of a champagne drenched masculine fairy tale. He's the Toyota Camry and stale beer reality. He's a hump, who all his life carried other peoples water in hopes that one day he'd be swimming in his own pool, looking into his own mansion filled with people that respect and revere him as the top dawg. He blinked and it was twilight, and there he was relatively in the same place he began. All the death all the lies, the hard, herd work, and the indoctrination for what? There is a scene later in the movie where he and Donnie are in the car discussing the death of Nicky (Bruno Kirby) a former associate and friend whom Lefty murdered with the okay of his boss over a completely unconfirmed suspicion. In yet another bit of astoundingly layered acting by Pacino we watch the doubt, realization, creep into his conscious, break down his defenses, and set the timer for implosion of his whole life, plunging into chaos, right before he cuts the blue wire and returns to his ordered world.

The tragedy of Donnie Brasco and Lefty Ruggiero, is that they are both acutely aware that they are just spokes on a wheel, and that both of them want out , but are held prisoner by their own convictions, and belief in the systems they perform from within. They believe them because they can't afford not to. In a physical sense, but even moreso a psychological. If the fantasy, the dream of each of their piece of America isn't real , then what is it all for? The alternative is far too depressing, far too morose, and it's both part of the films power, and what makes it a hard watch. The film credits roll, and though Donnie Brasco isn't beguiling us, it isn't selling us, it ain't even preaching to us, it feels punishing merely existing in its “too close for comfort” realm of plainness. A somber meditation on loyalty, code, and the illusory nature of the American dream , where it's protagonist is no hero, and it's antagonist no villain, nor the reverse. They're merely humps carrying the load of other people's success to and from them on their way to their own fates, much like the rest of us. What this makes Donnie Brasco in effect is almost repellent. The movie bucks a long-standing understanding of what audiences are supposed to expect from the genre by creating a film that is less a movie about ascension, than detention. The movie is not the realization of potential, but the holding back of by various external forces and self impediment. Lefty Ruggiero is not a manifestation of a particular desire in us for affirmation of our mobility in the increasingly narrow margins of society, but a confirmation of our worst fears, that it may all be for naught. The movie is in a state of flux, of anxiety, and unease about it's characters, their relationships, and ultimately the ending. What is Pistone doing this for? Putting himself through this for? Lefty's lies, cause Pistone to consider his own. Lefty's sins his own. Pistone's minor rebellions and revolts against upper management are not merely a matter of the undercover work wearing on him, but the image of himself and his job becoming more and more visible for what it is. Lefty and Joe are both on the same journey of existential, saddening self discovery, and it makes their friendship one of poetic melancholy , and the movie an ice cold slap of water to the face in the midst of a deep sleep. It is an enjoyable, quotable, and sometimes even funny movie, but also the sobering reality of what it feels like to be a gangster in a world where missteps very likely mean death, and in that light is not the gangster film we wanted, but the gangster film we needed.

You ever watch a film and feel bad that you watched? Shohei Imamura's "Vengeance is mine" is that movie.

There is a scene that takes place almost a third of the way into Shohei Imamura's  "VENGEANCE IS MINE"-  The 1979 film based on real life serial killer Akira Nishiguchi (Here called Iwao Enokizu)  that I think forms my own thesis around the film.  The killer (played with unsettling verve by Ken Ogata)  has met his next victim on a train ride back from a recent con in another city ( Nishiguchi was a confidence man as well as a serial killer) we know he has met his next victim because Masuru Baba's script provides unavoidable clues in dialogue and exposition that Iwao is plotting as much,  but Imamura's camera is doing the exact opposite.  There is no distinct close up of either predator Iwao or his prey, no foreshadowing cue in the music (in fact no music at all),  but we know,  and Imamura knows we know.  He cuts away to a completely different scene that doesn't involve Iwao at all,  and when we return Iwao is shopping.  We note that he's picked up groceries,  and then almost as an afterthought stops by a hardware store and picks up a hammer and then nails.  Imamura tarries here a bit,  he wants us to foreshadow,  " He's going to kill the lawyer...Here it comes".  When we arrive at the scene of  where we are sure a future crime will take place-  in a haunting reveal the crime has already taken place and the lawyer is already dead.  The nails and the hammer are so Iwao can shut the now-loose door of an armoire he's stuffed him in.  When it is clear what has happened we are left to wrestle with our own morbid desire and disappointment.  The combination of Ogatas coldly detached,  oddly warm performance,  the dark sense of humor depicted in Iwaos nonchalant tries at holding the door shut,  and Imamura's matter of fact way of shooting it ( a medium shot of Iwaos unbothered sealing of the armoire) makes for one of the most chilling scenes I've seen.

It also speaks to where I think the weight of Imamura's film lies.  Imamura's film  I think understands sociopathy more than other filmmaker on the subject besides Harron in " American Psycho" (Whom I think is not given enough credit for a finely crafted film about veneers,  and male sociopathy)  and more importantly it understands the audiences relationship with the behavior.  The film jumps out to an ominous opening, a setup to what seems to be an evenly paced deep exploration into the mind of a killer with the usual flourishes we're used to of grisly reenactments,  and high concept dialogue,  but then sets about taking its time to wander and meander around the edges of Iwaos chaotic life,  focused intently on some minutae flushed against the backdrop of flashbacks,  time stamps,  and abrupt restrained violence.   It dangles clues to some greater understanding, but Imamura is having none of it.  His film won't allow you to explain it away with a take on religion,  or greater society as a whole (though the film is clearly not a fan of the former) to blame mental illness,  or most importantly to escape the strange connection between the murderer and our own macabre voyeurism.  It baits us into a trap created by our own curiosity and each time switches garish ostentation for frigid realism.  As as the case with the murder of a woman with whom Iwao had seemingly grown close to.  Once again we know this is coming at some point, but when it arrives its so abrupt we have no time to even be shocked by it.   It's chaotic,  and impulsive, and it does not give you time to react or even more to the point to fake a reaction tying us to Ken Ogata's  Iwao as he tries to impersonate feelings near the end of the scene…

In many films of the genre we deny ur own craven desire for the very violence we claim to condemn. We secretly hope for, we await, we ponder where it might end for a high. Imamura's film is misguides us to a purpose.  It gives us the most insight into its disaffected killer by refusing to dress up what we are watching,  or why we are watching it.  It's an uncontaminated look at a mutual- though obviously not for the same reasons - disconnect that occupies much of the same tonal space as Mary Harron's American Psycho.  Both astute absurdist observations on the masks we wear. Calling bullshit on society's obsession with cultural piety,  and the look of things, the aesthetics, with an offbeat senses of humor.  One difference being Imamura's film is hyperrealism,  Harron's satire.  Vengeance is mine accomplished exactly what I thought it would,  just without the benefit of the heavy handed guided tour I've gotten used to for this type of film.  Haunting in its plainness, it's execution,  and the near flawlessness of its actors.  Affecting,  mostly because its so unaffected with itself.  The movie poses no questions,  gives us no answers, as affirmed in the final scene featuring Ogata, and Rentarō Mikuni (himself outstanding as Shizuo Enokizu Iwao's father)  yet another of Imamura's setups for some form of philosophical offering,  that instead turns into the equivalent of one of my favorite lines in Sam Mendes film  "The Road to Perdition"    When Daniel Craig's character is asked by Tom Hanks youngest son  why he's always smiling and Craig's character replies....

Vengeance is mines is a straightforward unornamented look at the detachment of a killer, taking his vengeance on a society he feels no kinship with,  and a director  willing to confront the absurdity of it all,  and the audiences own special brand of detachment, morbid curiosity and desensitization. A cinematic cousin of Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” that left me ruined, confused,  and astounded by its craftsmanship.  A masterpiece study in the absurd.