Joseph Pistone is still a name to remember for all FBI agents even today.
It can be said that without him alone, regardless of life and death, he went deep into the five major families of the New York Mafia to carry out undercover missions for five years, and then there would be no legend of hundreds of gangsters being successfully convicted and imprisoned.
Of course, joseph Piston, who had achieved fame, was completely isolated from the peaceful life of the past, and in order to escape the pursuit, even after more than twenty years, he still had to live under disguise and mask.
Of course, while bringing troubles and difficulties, this legendary undercover experience has also made his once unchanged life full of infinite possibilities.
Joseph, who had been promoted to fruitless endeavors, eventually became a senior consultant to the FBI through years of undercover experience.
In 1989, after writing and publishing Downey Blasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia, a memoir of his undercover experiences, he became a successful best-selling author.
It was through this realistic memoir that Hollywood came up with the idea of a movie. Then there was this gangster movie starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp, "The Traitor."
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" > a masterpiece of regret</h1>
It all started in 1989, when Hollywood producer Mark Johnson, after reading Downey Blasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia, thought the story was dramatic and had the potential to be adapted into a good movie, so he hired his partner Gayle Mutrux and screenwriter Gayle Mutrux to create the script for The Faithful.
At a time when gangster movies were the darlings of commercial films in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a great gangster movie script was really something to come by and hard to come by.
At that time, Konstantin Film Company felt that this was a huge opportunity, so he volunteered to become the distribution company of the film.
A successful commercial film requires not only a great script, but also an equally brilliant director and actor. In order to ensure the quality of the finished film, the film company first hired the well-known British director Mike Neville as the helmsman of the film, and also circled Al Pacino and Tom Cruise as the main actors of the film.
Since taking over the role of "The Godfather" in 1972, Al Pacino, with his superb acting skills and outstanding characteristics, has shined in many gangster film works.
By the 1990s, he himself had become synonymous with gangster movies, and it was expected that the studio would choose him as the old leftist in "The Traitor".
Of course, this also gave Al Pacino the opportunity to portray his last deep-rooted gangster character on screen in the nineties.
Although Tom Cruise in the early 1990s had not yet grown into a well-known action star today, he was also one of the most popular students in Hollywood with his outstanding performances in many films such as "Top Gun", "Rain Man" and "Born on the Fourth of July".
If everything had not changed, the screen duel between the two actors would have left a strong mark on film history, and perhaps it would have changed Tom Cruise's subsequent acting career.
Unfortunately, just when everything was ready and the film production was about to get on track, it suddenly came that the big director Martin Scorsese was preparing to shoot the same gangster theme of "Good Guys".
In order to avoid direct conflict with it, the original filming plan of "The Loyal Traitor" was temporarily shelved, and the turnaround was five years later in 1996.
At this time, although Al Pacino was still the best candidate for the film's left, Tom Cruise had to give up playing the main role of the film, Downey Blasco, due to scheduling conflicts, and the producers finally found Johnny Depp, who was also a popular student, as a replacement for Tom Cruise.
Although it does not have the sunny and handsome figure of Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp's melancholy temperament gives the film a different taste.
Al Pacino's groundbreaking contrast from gangster to gangster villain is even more impressive.
The two powerful actors add a lot to this biographical film that does not invest much, and the storyline is not particularly brilliant.
What is unexpected is that "Loyal Traitor", which has devoted countless efforts and time to the ambition of the production team, finally ended up with a regretful ending.
Since the 1990s, the proliferation of works of the same genre and the oversatuation of the market have made gangster films no longer popular with audiences and critics, and the rapid rise of action movies and science fiction films in the same period has gradually begun to change the development direction of commercial films.
In such a context of the times, although "The Faithful Traitor" seems to be a very good work today, it was a mediocre work that was not outstanding in business and art at that time.
At the 70th Academy Awards in 1998, "The Faithful" was only nominated for the award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and ultimately lost to "L.A. Confidential", which also had a luxurious lineup.
< h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" > era</h1>
Born in 1997, "The Faithful Traitor" can be said to be the originator of films such as "Infernal Affairs" depicting police confrontation and undercover action, but the ingenuity of the film is far more than that.
The biggest breakthrough and achievement of "Loyal Traitor" should be to tell the story of small people while showing the vicissitudes of the entire era with a small view.
If you want to really understand "The Faithful", you have to talk about the United States in the seventies.
During this period, although the United States stopped the Vietnam War that lasted for many years, it was still engaged in a fierce "Cold War" with the Soviet Union, and the arms race intensified.
Internally, the further development of the black civil rights movement, the women's liberation movement, and the anti-war movement has triggered drastic changes in society, and the arms race and inflation have caused the ECONOMIC situation in the United States to plummet and fall into a decade-long downturn.
The entire 1970s was also the era of the people's greatest disappointment with the government, and in just a decade, the United States changed three consecutive presidents.
First Nixon was forced to resign as president because of the "Watergate incident", then he did not meet the people's call for economic revival, and he ignored the opposition to The amnesty for Nixon' Ford, followed by the most unpopular and most unruly president in American history, Jimmy Carter.
Political turmoil and economic depression, coupled with the continued expansion of law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, made the general public during this period generally dissatisfied and questioned the US government.
Based on such an era background, it is not difficult to understand why "Loyal Traitor" will always be filled with depression and melancholy throughout the movie.
The disdain for the army and the nostalgia for the past time by the old left and a group of mafia members in the movie is not just a verbal complaint of a few gangsters, but a common voice in the hearts of ordinary Americans in that era.
The "old left" played by Al Pacino in the movie appeared as a veteran who had been on the underworld for more than thirty years.
This character, like many old-school gangsters, is full of yearning for money, reputation and a happy family, but it backfires, because of the righteousness and good thoughts that still exist in his heart, even if he has been in the jianghu for many years, he has never been able to become a real cruel character, unable to become the protagonist of the gangster story.
The poor income often makes him face the dilemma of not being able to make ends meet, and the changes of the times have also made his family's desire to be happy become out of reach, and the old left son, who grew up under different values, eventually went to the hospital because of his addiction to drugs in the film.
Compared with the image of lao zuo, an old and good man, Sonny who successfully won the gangster in the film is fierce, but as the story continues to develop, Sonny also shows a serious and righteous side, and he has become a strong promoter of Downey's further in-depth organization.
In addition to outlining the image of gangsters such as Lao Zuo and Sonny, the film also portrays and depicts the government law enforcement agencies shrouded in formalism and bureaucracy.
The most direct and obvious is the superior supervisor from Washington in the film, who first expresses not praise for his excellent actions when he meets Downey, but insists that he introduce another agent into the gang despite the danger.
Later, in order to further gain the trust of Lao Zuo and Sonny, Downey needs to temporarily requisition a luxury yacht, but the stereotypical and conservative supervisor is only concerned with how he can maximize his profits, regardless of the dangerous situation That Downey faces.
Compared with the ruthless government agencies, although Lao Zuo is in the middle and lower classes of the gang, he still takes care of Downey everywhere, regarding him as his friend and relative, and the boss Sonny and others can even beat up Japanese waiters in the restaurant because of Downey's few words.
In stark contrasts, Downey gradually loses confidence in his work and adherence to life's creeds, and loses his original identity.
In the end, when the government does not hesitate to sabotage the whole operation in order to check the taxes, Downey is completely sober——— such a cold and hypocritical government is not worth his birth and death.
He eventually took it upon himself to break off contact with his superiors, hoping to escape, even as a gangster. But the cruel and indifferent real world and the fragmented family situation finally make Downey have to make a dilemma.
In addition to Downey and Lao Zuo, the image of the wife in the film has a little more realistic meaning and the meaning of the times than the vase supporting roles in previous works of the same type.
At the end of the 1970s, while the black civil rights movement achieved one struggle after another, the feminist movement advocating equality between men and women, freedom of love, and freedom of marriage gradually gained the recognition of mainstream social values in the United States and even in the West.
Traditional conservative notions of marriage and family have become a thing of the past in the arduous struggles of countless independent feminists.
Therefore, the Downey wife in the movie is no longer the role of the beautiful vase in the previous Hollywood blockbusters, and no longer obsessively plays the role of a good wife and mother.
Like Downey, she also has her own life pursuits and life choices, she and Downey have a marriage and family because of love, and she can also choose to give up marriage in disappointment after disappointment.
From the perspective of plot development and character development, the huge artistic achievements of "The Faithful" with only tens of millions of dollars of investment are beyond the reach of many Hollywood popcorn blockbusters today.
Although the film ended with regrets and failed to win the little golden man, it is still a classic gangster movie and a police movie masterpiece.