The aftermath of the whole situation is captured in the last moments of the film, where Depp is given a $500 check by the FBI for his "efforts" during "Operation Don Brasco" and a medal while the FBI actually goes to Madsen and his men and shows them pictures of Depp as a real FBI agent, exposing him for what he really was. While Madsen and his men play it off as if they don’t believe the FBI and that "Donnie" was an undercover agent, Pacino knows his fate: because he was the one to bring this undercover agent into the family, he is the one who must take the fall for it. There is a rather emotionally disturbing scene at the end where Pacino is sitting in his apartment dressed regally in a suit, waiting for the phone to ring.....and then the call comes. He gets himself together, tells his wife not to wait up for him, and says to her "If Donnie calls....tell him.....if it had to be anyone I’m glad it was him....." as he leaves the apartment on his way to his death sentence. It was a disturbing scene in the fact that we can imagine sitting there knowing you're going to be called to be killed any minute; and then the phone rings. It was a goosebump moment for sure. How do you handle something like that? How can you know that you are being called to be killed? Pacino's character always played by the rules of the mafia game, and so he takes the death sentence responsibly -- he brought Donnie in, he fooled them, it his ultimately his fault and he must be eliminated for it.
From what I understand through a great deal of research I did on the case and watching the countless documentaries about it, this motion picture pretty much followed exactly what the real Joseph Pistone endured while under the hand of Lefty Ruggiero and his mob family, and the way in which the infiltration brought down their operation was pretty much rendered spot-on. But much like CopLand, this film boasted a somewhat healthy dose of good lead roles but somehow just fell flat as a final result -- it is mildly entertaining, yes, but something is just "off" about Pacino and Depp's acting as if they just could have done so much more. To me, Pacino was definitely not on top of his game here. Leave that to any time Brian DePalma gets behind the camera with Pacino in a lead role...
As I mentioned, this is the second release of this title for Columbia/TriStar in their attempt to re-visit all their circa 1997 initial DVD releases into "remastered" Special Editions of some kind; the results were mildly disappointing -- even though you're not expecting Star Wars here in terms of hit-you-over-the-head performance.
VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS:
DIGITALLY MASTERED 2:35:1 ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN PRESENTATION
While I didn’t have Columbia's original release on hand to compare this to, lets just say (even though the studio claimed to digitally master this) this isn’t the prettiest print you'll lay eyes on; it's not really bad, but video noise and some compression artifacts work their way in from time to time -- the most notable part of the transfer came when the vibrant, lush colors of the Miami, Florida greenery was onscreen and these seemed like they were jumping off my monitor. I detected no noise during these sequences. But once the action returned to the gritty streets of New York in the winter, the picture quality on this transfer became average at best.
Letterboxing was visible at 2:35:1.
AUDIO SPECIFICATIONS:
DIGITALLY MASTERED ENGLISH DOLBY DIGITAL 5.0 & ENGLISH, FRENCH & SPANISH DOLBY SURROUND; SUBTITLES IN ENGLISH, FRENCH & SPANISH; DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY TRACK
There you have it folks -- and you’re not reading it wrong. This was a 5.0 mix. Yes. No LFE channel present. Not that a film dealing with this kind of material would actually somehow benefit from an LFE channel, but it is strange to see such a label in this day and age of digitally remastered surround mixes; there are plenty of other titles that don’t deserve an LFE track either and yet they find their way into full blown "5.1" presentations.
At any rate, there's really nothing going on here aurally. The track is front-focused and only utilizes the rears during night club sequences to support the cheesy '70s disco score that seems to resonate from somewhere in the five-speaker array of a typical household home theater. And even then, the effect is not that great. This is nowhere near a spine-tingling track, folks, not that you would expect that, but it is disappointingly inactive and uninvolving, not to mention the actual output power is on the weak side. This one is going to need some cranking up beyond normal levels just to hear the dialogue at times between Depp and Pacino. Overall, a disappointing audio presentation that remains up front most of the time. There are some moments of good left to right stereo separation through the front stage, but the track is simply uninvolving to say the least.
Being that this was reminted into a Special Edition, the extras included:
-Exclusive Featurette: "Donnie Brasco - Out From The Shadows"
-Original Featurette
-Deleted Scenes
-Isolated Music Score
-Theatrical Trailers
-Weblink
-Talent Files
-Interactive Menus
-Production Notes
-Scene Selections
