This was the wrong time to be teaming up with Colin Farrell, back during that short stretch when the actor was more handsome than interesting, and this is a pretty rote CIA spy thriller that is briefly curious but then scrambles off into duller territory. ![]() ![]() In this case, that would have been a lot more fun. This is a classic example of the old Gene Siskel bit about whether or not a movie would be more interesting if it were just the actors having lunch. That sounds like it has potential, but if you were wondering whether or not there is a scene in which one of these old guys takes too much Viagra, worry not … that’s what sets the whole plot into motion. So here he is, with Christopher Walken as a hitman assigned to kill him as soon as he gets out of jail and Alan Arkin as their former getaway driver. Pacino wasn’t going to let the Old Dogs trend of gathering a bunch of old actors and letting them reminisce in a series of increasingly silly situations pass him by. This is possibly the lowest-energy performance Pacino has ever given. There was a time when Channing Tatum thought Dito Montiel was his Steven Soderbergh - before upgrading to the actual Soderbergh - and the nadir of their collaboration was this hackneyed, supremely dopey crime thriller in which Pacino looks like he just finished rolling his eyes at his director right before cameras started rolling. The resolution is even dumber than the execution, and the worst crime of all is that this movie is, alas, a lot longer than 88 minutes. There was a period in the mid-aughts when the entire pitch meeting for Al Pacino movies was “have a crime happen in the beginning and then just sort of let Al do what he wants the rest of the way.” This is the pits of those, a tired thriller in which Pacino plays a police profiler who receives a call that he has 88 minutes to live and must figure out whether it’s true and, if it is, who’s going to kill him. And then you remember the masterpieces and forgive him everything … well, maybe not 88 Minutes. Pacino has made some terrible films that will make you wonder why he bothers. What that leaves are some truly skippable movies and some unassailable gems. And we’re setting aside his HBO work, which includes Angels in America and the forthcoming Paterno. ![]() (Sorry, Hangman.) Ditto his documentary Looking for Richard. ( “What’s my name?” “Dunk-acino!”) Some of his recent, barely released films are being ignored. We ignored cameos, although we’d be remiss not to at least note that his best performance in the last ten years is probably his incredible, lunatic turn in Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill. If anything, our rankings argue that his best work has been more spread out than that, with some of his 1990s filmography as glorious as his ’70s heyday.īut before we get to the list, let’s go over some caveats. And yet, the man has given us so many brilliant performances - and they’re not all pre-1980. The problem is, a lot of his fans have had to fast-forward, too - or just pretend they didn’t happen. But if I ever see a movie that I feel, ‘Oh, gee, I went too far,’ I just fast-forward it a bit and move on.” There’s a couple of roles that, you know, the needle screeched on the record. ![]() “And a tenor needs to hit those high notes once in a while. “I think sometimes I went there because I see myself kind of like a tenor,” he said in March about his growing penchant to go big. That’s especially true with his onscreen approach, which started off as intensely interior and has morphed over time into flamboyantly demonstrative. And it’s also true that he’s given us a lot of dreck in the last few decades.Ī workaholic, a genius, a guy who makes a lot of odd choices concerning the scripts he picks, Pacino seems quite content to do whatever the hell he wants and damn the consequences. There is no question, as he nears his 78th birthday, that he remains one of the towering figures of film acting of the last half-century. (If anything, leaving the limelight at 40 would have only bolstered his artistic credentials.) That, of course, did not happen, and as a result film critics and movie lovers have had to reckon with the exhaustive oeuvre this man has created - and, for better or worse, keeps creating. If Al Pacino had announced in, say, 1980 that he was retiring - deciding that the strenuous demands of Method acting had become too much for him - he’d have already done enough incredible work to be considered an all-timer.
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