PEOPLE I KNOW (Dan Algrant, 2003) 41

Reviewed: April 25th, 2003

Welcome to a monotonous imagining of Sidney Falco thirty-five years later, having rose to the top and fallen back down again, played by Pacino as half effeminate Mama's boy (hated that goddamn fake Southern accent) and half battered jack-o-lantern. The performance veers dangerously close to self-parody sometimes, but it hardly seems fair of me to hold that against this film, since (A) Most Pacino performances these days do exactly that (save his masterful turns in Donnie Brasco and Insomnia) and (B) His performance -- no matter how over-baked it might be -- is the only thing that kept me from falling asleep. Nearly every scene chugs on tirelessly, void of much interest, practically outstaying its welcome before its even begun; this is one of those I-kinda-wanna-be-a-plotless-character-study-but-I-don't-have-the-guts-so-I'm-gonna-tack-on-an-incredibly-fucking-stupid-halfass-conspiracy/murder-subplot movies. Plus there's another lame sop, a tossed aside romance angle with Kim "I have precious little talent" Basinger playing the widow of Pacino's brother and now looking to start a relationship with Al. I might have found this idea acceptable or remotely believable had Basinger not been given only three scenes (one at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end), the film seeming even less interested in her than it does the absurd murder nonsense. Frequently poor dialogue is on-the-nose ("Remember when you wanted to change the world?" Basinger asks Pacino) and the ending is cheaply... dumb. Any movie clueless enough to earnestly cast Ryan O'Neal as one of the world's biggest movie stars deserves to be studiously ignored when it also dares to tell us anything about racial problems in a pre-911 Manhattan. Sat on by Miramax for way too long, the already pointless People I Know is now dated also. The fact that in spite of all these complaints I still give People I Know a rating as high as 41 is either a testament to my unabashed predilection for down-and-out-tough-guy films or a tribute to one silent, (ostensibly) unremarkable sequence with Pacino walking by the park under snowfall (photography courtesy Peter Deming, Lynch's sometimes DP) that made me remember everything I love about this dirty town.

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