Donnie Brasco

This is Depp's coming-of-age role, and he's terrific. Pacino, who's shown more flash than substance recently, reminds us how great he can be when he loses himself inside a character.

Although perhaps familiar in its outer trappings, Pacino's fine work is the key to the film succeeding to the extent that it does.

A tense, sharp and compelling character study, Newell's film is a worthy addition to the Mob-movie canon.

Unfortunately, the story isn't inventive and Newell's methodical approach to it verges on monotony.

A first-class Mafia thriller that is also, in its way, a love story.

A fine film, though not quite a classic, mostly because it didn't break any ground, or show us a new way of telling this type of story (25th anniversary)

A clever insight into the everyday, professional banalities of life as a low to mid-level gangster.

Depp's tight, guarded performance is almost painful to watch, and Newell seems to have reined in the flamboyant Pacino, whose portrait of the mobster as a grumpy old man may be his best work in years.

It's tempting to think Pacino stopped trying sometime in the mid-1980s. But watch Lefty's elegiac final scene and you might conclude that it's not Al's ability that's dimmed, rather it's the imagination of casting directors that's grown stale.