Word: pacino
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...Godfather, with Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, Friday, April 26, at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, April...
...apart from the grip of the story and Al Pacino's soulful lead performance, Serpico is superficial, even heartless. The filmmakers have done no original investigations, and accept the reportage of Peter Maas as gospel. In their film, no other cop besides Serpico and an idealistic inspector are at all virtuous; Serpico's Ivy League associate, David Durk, is here preening and pompous, nothing like the dedicated, befuddled naif whom even Maas found sincere. And Lumet, Salt and Wexler never detail the reluctance of police higher-ups to listen to Serpico: New York City and police officials are cardboard figures...
Moriarty is among a handful of young stars who dominate the recent spate of "masculine mystique" movies - Al Pacino (Serpico, Scarecrow), Robert De Niro (Bang the Drum, Mean Streets), Harvey Keitel (Mean Streets), Martin Sheen (Badlands). They are nei ther heroic nor antiheroic leading men but character actors. The star quality is there, but deliberately subject to the stage-oriented discipline of craftsman ship and technique. Moriarty is not really a "natural talent," observes Donald Schoenbaum, managing director of Minneapolis' Tyrone Guthrie Theater, where Moriarty spent four seasons in repertory. "His talent is as much intellectual...
Wonderful potential, and wasted. Serpico has some brutal surface flash and an acetylene performance by Al Pacino in the title role, but its energy is used to dodge all the questions it should have raised and answered. It is not enough to have Serpico reminisce about his childhood, recalling the impression of power and control he got from a couple of guys in blue uniforms, to explain what brought him to the force. It is clearly shown that Serpico is a New York street kid, but this movie asks us not only to accept that a man with that back...
Hackman is fine as the snarling Max. Scruffy and bespectacled, he has a good time hunkering down into his characterization. But he gets in so far that no other actor can reach him. Pacino's characterization of Lion therefore remains unresolved. Hackman and Pacino never really react off one another because Hackman remains too selfabsorbed. The tension between the two actors is tangible and arresting, at least initially, but it eventually hobbles what small humanity the movie might have...