Donnie Brasco

You know all those movies where the bad guy looks at the good guy and says, “we’re not so different, you and I?” That concept is the poignant, underlying theme of “Donnie Brasco” (1997). Johnny Depp is the young, family man, undercover FBI agent and Al Pacino is the world-weary mob wiseguy, but they’re not so different. They’re both mid-level grinders, bound together, trying to do their best while their bosses take advantage of them. The allure of being someone he’s not has Depp turning away from his own life of quiet desperation, but is the alternative that different? Fuggedaboutit.

The Courier

I hadn’t seen a good Cold War spy thriller in a while, so I was interested in viewing “The Courier” (2021). It trundles pithily down a familiar, based-on-a-true-story path, with little, tiny spy cameras and Benedict Cumberbatch as a salesman recruited to serve as the West’s go-between to a Soviet colonel concerned about Khrushchev. Then comes the Cuban Missile Crisis and things take a dark turn, with KGB agents, dark prison cells, and Cumberbatch looking wan on the Capital A Acting diet. It’s not bad, just jarring. Spoiler alert: We all didn’t die in a nuclear holocaust 60 years ago.