Donnie Brasco is a 1997 crime drama film directed by Mike Newell

Mike Newell (director)

Michael Cormac "Mike" Newell is an English director and producer of motion pictures for the screen and for television. After the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2005, Newell became the third most commercially successful British director in recent years, behind Christopher Nolan...

, starring Al Pacino

Al Pacino

Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...

, Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp

John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...

 and Michael Madsen

Michael Madsen

Michael Søren Madsen is an American actor, poet, and photographer. He has appeared in more than 150 films, most of them small independent films, though he has starred in central roles in such films as Reservoir Dogs, Free Willy, Donnie Brasco, and Kill Bill, in addition to a supporting role in Sin...

. It is loosely based on the real-life events of Joseph D. Pistone

Joseph D. Pistone

Joseph Dominick Pistone, alias Donnie Brasco, , is a former FBI agent who worked undercover for six years infiltrating the Bonanno crime family and to a lesser extent the Colombo crime family, two of the Five Families of the Mafia in New York City...

, an FBI agent who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family

Bonanno crime family

The Bonanno crime family is one of the "Five Families" that dominates organized crime activities in New York City, United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the Mafia ....

, one of the Mafia

Mafia

The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

's Five Families

Five Families

The Five Families are the five original Italian-American Mafia crime families which have dominated organized crime in America since 1931. The Five Families in New York remain as the powerhouse of the Italian Mafia in the United States.-History:...

 based in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 during the 1970s, under the alias "Donnie Brasco". The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
The true story of an FBI undercover agent (Johnny Depp) who becomes Donnie Brasco, "The Jewel Man" to infiltrate one of the mob families.