Outstanding!

Posted on the Pacino board also.

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Ok, well I finally got around to seeing this today - and I was really pleased. I wouldn't say I like this as much as "The Local Stigmatic" which I think is really brilliant (at least thinking about in retrospect now) although I think for most people the opposite will be true and this will be the one they like "more".

Unlike "Stigmatic" which is very experiemental and tough to get, this one plays more like a straight movie with a beginning, middle, end and a plot that can be followed. I can't really understand why Pacino didn't allow this one to be released in theaters because it would fit in nicely at any theater playing Indie or art-house movies. This could have gotten nominations for Pacino and Orbach.

The acting is at a very high level. I saw Pacino do this onstage in 1992 and his performance here is as good as it was onstage - but it's not exactly the same as he played it then. When I saw him do it in 1992, he came across as much more angry and less sympathetic. I think the flashbacks in the film make him more sympathtic - you see how he had a life and could have had a better life at one point.

There is one brief line I'd like to draw everyone's attention to (this is not a spoiler). At one point Jerry Orbach asks him how he thinks his brother will feel about the portrayal of him in the book......Pacino replies with 4 words : "He'll get over it". But he does more with those 4 words than you can imagine - his expression, the movement of his eyes - everything. Of course he gets some showy scenes as well which he nails - especially a scene where he describes how it's now or never for him near the end.

Orbach is totally up to this part. It's not easy to share a whole film with Pacino and not get blown away - but Orbach matches him and really the two performances play off each other - they aren't competing, they are working together. (Like Pacino & Jeffrey Wright in "Angels in America" or DeNiro/Williams in "Awakenings"). When I saw this onstage the part was played by an actor named Charles Cioffi and he was quite good too - I think in the film Orbach gets an advantage over Cioffi because you can focus the camera on him. Onstage pretty much all eyes were on Pacino. Orbach is funnier than Cioffi was, Cioffi seemed more angry and likely to hurt Pacino than Orbach does. Orbach plays it more like he's "fed up" which works well here.

Just like with Stigmatic, I found the prologue and epilogue fascinating - although not as necessary to understanding the film as it was for Stigmatic (I wouldn't skip them though).

Next up for me is Babbleonia and then I'm gonna watch Looking For Richard last since I've seen it before. So far I'm loving this boxset.