Friend Of Mine, Friend Of Ours

The trailer of Donnie Brasco.
an excerpt from a 1997 review from Salon:
Lefty can believe that he's a somebody when he's one-on-one with Donnie, ushering him into the mob world or playing host to him on Christmas Day in his shabby apartment. Among his cronies, he has to face how he's failed to rise in the organization and, when he's passed over in favor of Donnie, that he's never going to. The role offers an actor a dozen different opportunities to go soft. Pacino doesn't, even when Attanasio hands him a "What have I got to show for all my years" speech.

This is the warmest acting Pacino's ever done. Lefty is the hood with feeling, a sentimental conception that Pacino dries out and makes three-dimensional. He's vulnerable to Donnie, whom he sees as a surrogate son (his own is a junkie). If Donnie's cover is blown, it'll be Lefty who pays for bringing him into the family. Pacino carries all of Lefty's disappointments and weariness in his stoop-shouldered gait, and all of his emotion in those huge, dark, baggy eyes. Pacino knows that sentimentalizing the character would cheapen him. His final scene is all the more heartbreaking for the economy of gesture and feeling he brings it. It's an exit that does justice to both the actor and the role, and it leaves an ache in the movie.