Is Don­nie Bras­co the last tru­ly great Amer­i­can gang­ster movie?

Ever since Mar­tin Scors­ese served up his glo­ri­ous ode to Made Men back in 1990, gang­ster films have been silent­ly scream­ing, ​‘As far back as I can remem­ber, I’ve always want­ed to be Good­fel­las.’ Indeed, arguably the last tru­ly great mob flick arrived 20 years ago in the form of Mike Newell’s Don­nie Bras­co, which stars peak John­ny Depp as an under­cov­er fed who becomes seduced by the mafia lifestyle.

“Why’d you pay for that drink? A wise guy nev­er pays for his drinks.” This sage piece of advice is spo­ken by Ben­jamin ​“Lefty” Rug­giero (Al Paci­no), an ail­ing gang­ster whose sal­ad days of gun­run­ning and rack­e­teer­ing are firm­ly behind him, and who now spends his time argu­ing that Cadil­lacs are the pre­mier Amer­i­can car. After becom­ing intro­duced to local jew­el expert Don­nie Bras­co (Depp), how­ev­er, Lefty recon­nects with his past self and begins to tutor Don­nie in the ways of the wise guy.

After tak­ing a fugazi dia­mond ring back to a local clubown­er in Lefty’s debt, Don­nie proves him­self a man to be tak­en seri­ous­ly by punch­ing the fraud­ster, tak­ing the keys to his Porsche and leav­ing a bill in his pock­et for the drinks. Lefty, impressed by Donnie’s dis­play of strength, con­cedes that he still has a way to go if he’s going to make it into Lefty’s coterie of boot­leg­gers and brawlers. First les­son: wise guys nev­er pay for their drinks.

Of course, Donnie’s sud­den shift from reserved jew­el apprais­er to ruth­less right-hand man is just as sur­pris­ing to the audi­ence as it is to Lefty. That’s because Don­nie is actu­al­ly Joseph D Pis­tone, a real-life FBI agent who infil­trat­ed two of the Five Fam­i­lies in New York City in the late ​’70s. A pio­neer of under­cov­er oper­a­tions, Pistone’s exem­plary work with­in the Bonan­no crime fam­i­ly becomes, in direc­tor Newell’s hands, a thrilling account of a man in a city where men like him are killed for kicks.

Depp’s cen­tral per­for­mance is a mes­meris­ing les­son in total assim­i­la­tion, with the bor­ders of his dou­ble life blur­ring with every pass­ing moment. Each inflec­tion becomes more col­lo­qui­al and street-wise than the last, each punch hits hard­er than the first. By the time he has become an object of near-pater­nal affec­tion by Lefty (“I’m going on the record with you, nobody can touch you now”) it is no longer clear where Pis­tone the agent begins and Bras­co the cold-blood­ed gang­ster ends.

Part of the rea­son for this is Pistone’s con­stant fear of hav­ing his cov­er blown. In one nerve-shred­ding moment in a Japan­ese restau­rant, the wire he’s wear­ing is almost detect­ed before the scene reach­es its shock­ing­ly vio­lent cli­max. So com­mit­ted is he to his alter-ego that after a while we for­get he is even an FBI agent at all; when Bras­co fires a gun or throws a right hook we’re not see­ing law enforce­ment in action but the rage and resent­ment of a man deeply root­ed in crime.

Cru­cial­ly though, even when he starts to become that which he sets out to destroy, we nev­er stop car­ing about the man behind the leather jack­et and avi­a­tor shades. ​“I am not like them, I am them,” Joe exclaims to his wife Mag­gie (Anne Heche), who express­es con­cern over his long absence yet is unable to halt his trans­for­ma­tion. Sec­ond les­son: nev­er let your fake name become your real one.

Twen­ty years on, Don­nie Bras­co remains one of the finest gang­ster movies of its gen­er­a­tion. Viewed today, Pistone’s bloody descent into his own per­son­al hell, with ​“Lefty” act­ing as the Vir­gil to his crim­i­nal Dante, is as bru­tal and com­pelling as ever. So much so much, in fact, that we think the film deserves to sit along­side Good­fel­las at the pin­na­cle of the genre. And if you dis­agree, well, you can just, you know, fuggedaboutit!