A year or so before The Sopranos, Mike Newell’s Donnie Brasco offered a glimpse of the series with this sharp, “deep cover” mob flick, alternatively brutal and funny, and at the end, touching. Donnie Brasco (Johnny Depp) is actually FBI agent Joe Pistone, who goes undercover to break a mob crew led by Michael Madsen. His entree is provided by a lower-level made guy, Lefty (Al Pacino), who vouches for Donnie, shows him the ropes, and, as Donnie loses his moorings and allegiances (to both the FBI and his suffering wife, Anne Heche), becomes a father figure.

Paul Attanasio’s (Quiz Show, Disclosure, and several episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street) script is tight and playful. We get harrowing scenes where Donnie is conscripted to dispose of a body via hacksaw or merely nearly found out:

These scenes are followed by amusing vignettes of what mobsters do on vacation in Miami (water slides, burying colleagues in sand, bad tennis) or the everyday humdrum of the criminal life, stealing boxes of steak knives or parking meters.  Attanasio even includes a wry stab at marriage counseling between Depp and Heche. David Chase would do the same thing for Tony and Carmella Soprano a few years latter, to similar tragicomic effect.

As Donnie becomes enmeshed in his crew, the audience becomes invested in their survival, if not from the FBI, from rival mob crews. Depp sells this kinship very effectively. This was one of his first major dramatic roles and he shows a depth and darkness that is highlighted by Heche’s increasing frustration and anger. Tempering both performances is a rare restrained turn by Pacino, who becomes Donnie’s family. It is always a treat to see an older Pacino performance that shelves histrionics.

There are a few weaknesses. The Heche-Depp marriage, rocky as it is, seems too indomitable for reality, and Depp’s introduction into the crew seems a tad effortless. But this is a picture every bit as strong as the best of The Sopranos episodes.

Quentin Tarantino’s bona fides, established by the success of Reservoir Dogs, led to production of his script for Tony Scott’s overpraised and over-copied True Romance, a deafening whiz-bang, shoot ’em up.  A comic book store clerk in Detroit, Clarence (Christian Slater) happens upon a whore named Alabama (Patricia Arquette) in a movie theater during a triple feature of kung fu flicks.  Alabama likes kung fu flicks, a true romance is born, and Slater is driven to confront her pimp (Gary Oldman, playing black), in the process unknowingly stealing a million dollars worth of cocaine from the mob. He and Alabama are soon off to L.A. to sell the coke, and bloodshed ensues.

Tarantino’s voice is dominant, and we get a steady dose of racial epithets, tough guy jargon borrowed from previous genres, movie references (two on Steve McQueen) and the like. On the plus side, we also get a few taut and funny exchanges, the best being the fencing between Slater’s father (Dennis Hopper) and the mob underboss (Christopher Walken).

Unfortunately, the actors all appear to be vying for the Best Supporting Actor in a Quirky Scene of Tarantinoesque Patter, and many are not up to the task. Hyped-up cops Tom Sizemore and Chris Penn are particularly awful, but Gary Oldman’s excess nears embarrassing and Saul Rubinek’s Hollywood producer is a tiresome cliche’ of every oily movie mogul you’ve ever seen in film. While Walken and Hopper can do something with Tarantino’s writing, they are aided by their set piece scene, which is essentially two monologues. Those who are asked to act have a rougher go.

Which bring me to the leads. Slater handles the tough-guy patois but there’s no heart. He’s a loser but doesn’t feel like one. He’s a tough guy but doesn’t project. Mainly, he’s a nasally Nicholson wannabe who becomes increasingly grating. Arquette is better, but she’s not good, nor is she much more convincing. Her “whore with a heart of gold” is trite and cloying, and it isn’t until a later scene, where she fights for her life with the psychotic hit man James Gandolfini (in prep for Tony Soprano), that she communicates any depth.

Recently deceased director Scott (Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State and numerous other flashy, soulless action pictures) papers over the dull leads with a brisk pace, but his super shootout clusterfu** of a finale is laughable. It’s hard to identify what is worse – the implausibility, the slo-mo explosions, or the fluttering feathers from shot up pillows – but coupled with Tarantino’s by now played out macho dialogue (before an execution, Penn actually says, “this is for Cody”), this is as bad as it gets. Sadly, this kind of thing spawned a generation of allegedly hip, super violent copycat films.

This is the most un-Tarantinoesque of Quentin Tarantino’s pictures, faithfully adapted by the director from an Elmore Leonard book. A flight attendant (Pam Grier) gets caught shuttling money and drugs for a gun seller (Samuel L. Jackson) and caught in between the ATF (represented by Michael Keaton) and Jackson, she devises her own scheme to steal all of the latter’s funds while extricating herself from prosecution, enlisting the help of a bail bondsman (Robert Forster) in the process.

Tarantino’s pace is languid, his body count minimal, and the film features long stretches of sharp dialogue and silent character reflection. As Jackson’s scheming girlfriend and dim accomplice, Bridget Fonda and Robert DeNiro shine in a cast of apt, funny secondary characters. This is a clever and straightforward crime story.

Like the two Tarantino pictures that preceded it, Jackie Brown utlizes the seedy environs of Los Angeles to great effect (the bar and nightclub locales are particularly well-chosen). In an interview, Tarantino explained his changing of the locale from Miami to LA:

I don’t really know anything about Miami. I had never been to Miami before. One of the things Elmore Leonard has to offer in his novels, is an expert sense of both Miami and Detroit. He has got his Detroit novels and he has got his Miami novels. I can’t compete with that, and Miami is very hot! You don’t want to got there to shoot! One of the things I do have to offer is that same kind of knowledge about Los Angeles; partly in the area that the area is shot in, in the South Bay. It is not used that often. Tequila Sunrise used it a little bit, and a few other movies have touched on it a little bit. I am very familiar with that area because I grew up around that area. It is one of the things I could bring to the piece; an expert knowledge of that area, the way he brings an expert knowledge to Miami.

While Jackson uses the “n” word with his usual vigor, the script is refreshingly shorn of the showy pop culture references found in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. It’s also a lot moodier than those pictures.

The plot, however, is not wildly intricate and certainly doesn’t justify a 2 and a half hour running time. Also, while Tarantino loves reclamation projects like John Travolta and David Carradine, Pam Grier and Robert Forster are bridges too far. Neither are particularly good actors, and while Forster’s wooden approach isn’t terrible given his role, Grier is key, and she cannot convey the emotions necessary to really bring the character home.

She was a B picture star in the 70s for a reason other than acting.