An intense movie peopled by intense men doing intense things intensely. I am still hoarse from yelling Pacino’s lines back at the TV. (“Don’t waste my motherfucking time!”) From now on, “rat motherfucker” will be my go-to epithet and I’ll be bossing people around — “Let it bleed,” “Give me your shirt,” “Clean up. Go home.” — à la DeNiro.
But seriously, how did this film ever get cast? Pacino, DeNiro, Kilmer (oh, Kilmer), Voight (looking awful), Ashley Judd (looking awfuller), Wes Studi, Tom Sizemore, Natalie Portman, Hank Azaria, Jeremy Piven (better when bald), Bud Cort, Tom Noonan, Henry Rollins, and Tone Loc. Rat motherfucker, that’s a great cast.
But of course, as a star text, the film is most fascinating for its pairing of Al and Bobby. And their limited shared screen-time, for which the film is usually maligned, is the film’s secret weapon. The film is a prolonged tease that lends their flirtatious bromance the titillating air of hypermasculine scopophilia, culminating when both men reject their women, chase each other around, face off, and hold hands.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
11 Aug 2006 1:20 PM | Comments (3)
It’s the existential grappling between cop and criminal that, for me, makes this one of the two or three best actions films of the past two decades. And, of course, this is stating the obvious (but it does deserve to be restated): the heist kicks ass.
For a heist scene so obviously kick-ass, it always deserves to be restated. In all honesty, my one complaint about this film is Mann allowing Pacino to amp-up way passed 11. Meanwhile De Niro does very well just because he tones it down in contrast to Pacino and doesn’t rely on his late 90s trademark of constantly repeating his lines (see Ronin). The actors whose performances I appreciate more over time seem to be Kilmer and Haysbert, who does bleakly weary much better than impossibly stoic – at least in my mind.
I saw this for the first time not long after Batman Forever, and while I didn’t think Kilmer was great in it, it certainly raised my opinion of him, which had previously likened him to a mannequin more than a human being.
strjh02@moravian.com
11 August 2006
1:43 PM
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