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One of the more curious footnotes to the career of Al Pacino is that he was offered, and turned down, the part of Han Solo in 1977's Star Wars.
Now take a moment to imagine this: the young, pouchy-eyed Pacino reclining in the captain's seat of the Millennium Falcon, enjoying a moment with Chewie. Or the young, pouchy-eyed Pacino shouting "Hoo-wah!" as he zips like a frenetic elf up the ramp of the Falcon, trading blaster shots with attacking stormtroopers. Or the young, pouchy-eyed Pacino flying in like the cavalry in the film's climactic battle and, just before sending Vader's TIE fighter spinning madly into space, screaming, "Shay jello to my wittle vrend!"
Now, we're not saying that this would have been a better movie. But it sure would have been a more interesting one.
Which, really, is the best thing you can say about the very, very great Al Pacino. Or this: If you had to choose the films of one modern actor, and only one, to take with you into desert-island exile, whose oeuvre would you choose?
We submit Al Pacino. Here, you get cinematic art (the first two Godfathers; Dog Day Afternoon); you get high quality, high-satisfaction treats (Glengarry, Glen Ross, The Insider, Donnie Brasco) and you get delicious, delirious cheese (Scarface, The Devil's Advocate, City Hall). What more do you and your volleyball companion need? And, though we haven't seen every single Al Pacino movie, we are confident in asserting this: There's not a boring frame among them. Assuming you skip Madonna's love scenes in Dick Tracy.
How many actors of Pacino's stature still work so hard to entertain you? Wait a second -- how many actors are there of Pacino's stature, period? Only three Method giants survived the '70s unhobbled: Pacino, De Niro, and Duvall. All inarguably brilliant, each now following his own path. For Duvall, that means writing, directing, and starring in his own small, interesting films, such as The Apostle (with the occasional paycheque cameo in Gone in 60 Seconds). For De Niro, that means Rocky and Bullwinkle -- i.e., a long and leisurely retirement spent doing the same tics and twitches in about fourteen films a year, his rent-a-behind now firmly situated on his laurels.
Pacino, however, is working harder than ever. He works so hard, he spits. Think about it -- he's actually ramped up the energy since he started. His breakout role was as the near-somnambulant Michael Corleone, a guy who barely raised his voice. Fifteen years later, the older Pacino was tearing through every part like the hyperactive love child of the Tasmanian Devil and Cosmo Kramer.
The 1989 cop drama Sea of Love unveiled the latter-stage Pacino we've all become familiar with: bedraggled, haggard, and always on the verge of a vituperative outburst that threatened to clearcut the scenery for miles around. In some films, he seemed to throw open the throttle just to see what would happen. He spat and barked his way through Dick Tracy, literally spattering his fellow actors with half-chewed food (and earning an Oscar nomination, one of eight he's collected). In his role in The Devil's Advocate - a goofy drama about a naïve lawyer who signs on to a New York firm, only to discover that his boss, Pacino, is literally the devil! - he's so over the top, and having so much fun, that it's almost like he's decided to do a spot-on parody of himself.
Pacino's made some stinkers, sure, but he himself never, ever stinks. He seems to love acting, and love being a star. He takes bad movies (Any Given Sunday, The Recruit) and puts them on his shoulders, like some POW-rescuing commando in a Namsploitation flick. He hefts the picture on his back, shouts "Hoo-wah!," and drags it all out of the swamp.
And unlike other icons, who stretch and pull their faces like taffy to beat back the advance of years, Pacino's happy to let his expressive mug sag into wrinkles and crags. (Though his head does seem to be getting hairier, miraculously.)
Need a few more reasons to love Al Pacino? How about this: he's only been in thirty-six films. You know how many De Niro's been in? Almost double that, at sixty-eight, give or take The Fan. Hell, Ben Affleck's been in twenty-eight films already, and that's in the last ten years. Affleck is gaining on Pacino and soon will surpass him, if in this respect and this respect alone.
Also: Knowing Pacino is in a movie makes us happy. Because we know there will be at least one thing in the movie to enjoy: Pacino.
And, after ten years of whirling and sputtering like a twister, he seems to have entered the third stage of career: The Exhausted Man. In Insomnia, he plays Will Dormer, a sodden, sleep-deprived cop, dogged by investigators and his own guilty conscience. As the film plays out, he becomes more and more drained, until finally, ghost-white and blinking against the unrelenting Alaskan sun, he can barely discern what's real and what's a trick of the light. Pacino wails and bellows a bit in this film, just like in the old days, but without any real passion.
In the more recent People I Know, he's Will Dormer with a soft Southern accent. He's a career publicist, a sad sack wasted with regret, who stumbles around in a cloud of opium-befuddlement.
Pacino, the star who never quits, has switched it up again. He's done chilling restraint and he's done gleeful hamminess: now, he's doing depleted. Ironically, his portrayals of drained characters with nothing left to give only confirms how much more Pacino, the actor, still has stored in his reserves. This is very good news for our desert-island Pacino-fest, the bounty of which would keep us busy, and happy, for years.
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