Donnie Brasco

Donnie Brasco (1997) is Mike Newell's crime thriller you can watch online on iFILM. Brooklyn, late 1970s. An undercover FBI agent burrows so deep into the mob that his fake name starts to feel more real than his own.

Joe Pistone (Johnny Depp) lives two lives at once. At home there's a wife and kids who barely see him. On the street he's Donnie Brasco, a jewel fence who wins the trust of Lefty Ruggiero, an aging soldier going nowhere. Al Pacino plays Lefty with zero glamour: a tired errand man scraping by on scraps, who pins his last hope of respect on the newcomer. The longer Pistone keeps the mask on, the harder it gets to betray the man who vouched for him with his own life. Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby and a very young Paul Giamatti fill out the crew.

The screenplay grew out of the real Pistone's memoir, drawn from the six years he spent undercover, which is why the film treats mob routine as dull, dangerous work rather than legend. It earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and still ranks among the most clear-eyed gangster dramas around. Stream Donnie Brasco (1997) online on iFILM.