Go figure! It’s 8 years since Al Pacino has had a film in cinema release in this country, whereas his contemporary Robert De Diro has had the tiresome DIRTY GRANDPA, THE INTERN, JOY, and LAST VEGAS released.
At least two pictures Al has made in the last couple of years more than warrant, nay deserve, a release. They are MANGLEHORN and DANNY COLLINS.
Both are now available on DVD for home consumption, and both put paid to the old stigma of “straight to video”.
In MANGLEHORN, Pacino plays a locksmith called Manglehorn plying his trade in Austin, Texas.
He’s a lovelorn locksmith having the love of his life slip away from him years ago, a love he consistently sends correspondence to, only to be returned, unopened, to sender.
He shares his life with a Persian kitty cat called Fanny, who one day goes off her tucker. A visit to the vet unlocks the mystery – the kitty cat has swallowed a key and disrupted her digestive tract.
The not so key hole surgery to fix the obstruction is going to cost a motza, but he stumps up the cash for the stricken feline. His plight comes to the attention of bank teller, Dawn, played by Holly Hunter.
Dawn has been an acquaintance to the hermit like locksmith through his banking, and through her interest in Fanny’s predicament, Manglehorn invites her on a date. This culminates in a sequence of emotional humiliation and Hunter is heartbreakingly brilliant – literally hemorrhaging humiliation.
Manglehorn is aptly named – his life has been mangled, a mistake made years ago has made his life a wreck and a tangle, leaving a marriage in tatters and an estranged son who seems to have inherited the mangle gene.
Harmony Korine as Gary, a massage parlour impresario who Manglehorn used to coach in Little League gives a remarkable Dustin Hoffman channelling performance.
MANGLEHORN is another beautiful miniature from director David Gordon Green, whose previous film, JOE, featured the best performance by Nicolas Cage in a long while, also failed to secure a cinema release here.
In DANNY COLLINS, Pacino again plays the title character, this time a successful singer rather than a threadbare blue collar worker. What the character shares with Manglehorn is a broken marriage and an estranged son, and something from the past not acted upon, thus creating a fissure or a fracture on their futures.
A lost letter from John Lennon sent to Danny Collins forty years ago is the catalyst for the singer to connect with his son and redirect his career.
A terrific piece of casting sees Bobby Carnavale as Danny’s son, Tom, fiercely independent and with a family of his own. He is vehemently against his father inveigling himself into his daughter’s life with a profligate largesse.
Pacino plays the charismatic crooner with all the charm of an immense bracelet. Annette Bening as a hotel manager who falls for him, Jennifer Garner as his surprised daughter in law, and a terrific turn by Christopher Plummer as his agent.
Making his directorial feature film debut, writer director Dan Fogelman, who incidentally wrote Last Vegas, which starred Robert De Niro and did get a cinema release in this country, guides the story with an assured hand.
So for all those who thought Pacino had maybe retired from pictures, think again – when you see the real box office poison that gets a theatrical release in this country, you’ve got to wonder why Pacino isn’t picked up, especially when he is consistently making super little miniatures such as these.