Al Pacino's worst.

Judge the not so great ones by their bests,
But judge the great ones by their worsts...

Alright, so here is the thing. I'm a big Al Pacino fan. He is and has been my favorite actor for a long time. I recently watched two of his films.



You don't know Jack is one of his finest performances. It is bold, it is Al Pacino at his charismatic best and it stays strong till the very end. It was awesome to see him ease into the role of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Simply Fantastic!
Righteous Kill, on the other hand, left a very bad taste. All the excitement I had of watching Pacino and De Niro in the same movie was washed off real quick.

So coming to the point here, although I haven't seen all of the 40 odd films Pacino has acted in, I've seen most of them. So I'd like to ask all of you guys, which is the worst Al Pacino movie ever and which is the worst Al Pacino performance ever?

For me,
Worst Al Pacino movie: Ocean's thirteen
Worst Al Pacino performance: Righteous Kill

To add a bit,
Best Al Pacino movie: The Godfather
Best Al Pacino performance: Dog day afternoon/ You don't know Jack

He is that rarity among actors. As he gets older, he's become more mannered and a shouter. Clint Eastwood old is much better than Eastwood young, but for Pacino it's the reverse.

A bunch of the crap Pacino has appeared in during this last decade or so is just so lame I'd be scarce to find enough energy to hate them: they're simply huge wastes of time. In that relentlessly lackluster collection I'd put 88 Minutes, Righteous Kill, The Recruit, Two for the Money, People I Know, Gigli, S1m0ne. All pieces of junk, but too slight to really register much, either. I happen to like Soderbergh's Ocean's flicks just fine, but I don't see how even their biggest detractors can say with a straight face that they are actually worse than the likes of 88 Minutes or S1m0ne.

My least favorite performance from Pacino is, embarrassingly enough, the one he won his Oscar for. The scenery-chewing hokum of Scent of a Woman is unintentionally hilarious to me. But, hey, people seem to like it so whogivesafart, I guess?

For me the worst movie he starred in was Cruising, and I'd count Revoilution as the biggest disappointment and the role where he was the most miscast.

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I'll admit that both Cruising and Revolution are pathetic; Kinski is certainly as miscast as Pacino. However, even though I've only watched Cruising once, that incredible, disgusting, he didn't really-do-it moment in it was quite suspenseful and shocking. I realize that in the grander way of looking at things, it was exploitational, but I honestly believe that Friedkin was trying to top what he got away with in The Exorcist during what I guess I have to now call the "Execution Sex Scene" in Cruising.

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So it's no surprise that I liked Cruising then. I liked Scarface, too and I seem to remember that film being torn apart by the critics, too. Maybe they just thought it was time to give him a critical kicking in the early 80's?

I also feel the same way about Pacino's Scent Of A Woman performance as Holden, though I'd say his performance in Heat comes pretty close to it. The last performance of his I really enjoyed was as Lefty, in Donnie Brasco.

88 Minutes was absolutely dreadful.

But I dug The Recruit.

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Suspect's Reviews

Righteous Kill.

the worst that i have seen is 88 min

I'll second Scent of a Woman, just didn't get it. Although the performance stays with me, I cringe when I think of it.

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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx

Surely not sir...I think Pacino's performance in Heat is superb and would rate it up there with his best work (which is still Dog Day Afternoon in my opinion). Totally with you on Lefty though; a great character from a great movie.

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Started watching Righteous Kill last night and couldn't believe how awful it was just a few minutes into it. When Carla Gugino showed up at the crime scene wisecracking, I had to switch over to the French Open. Such a waste for Pacino (and DeNiro). (I usually give movies a chance, but this one started out so with so much bluster and dumbness I couldn't go on) Heat was one thing, but this.....

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Worst Movie Pacino has appeard in : Gigli (2003)
Worst Movie in Which Pacino was billed as the Lead-88 minutes(2007)

Favourite Pacino Movie As lead- ...And Justice for All (1979)
ensemble-Glengarry Glen Ross
Favourite Pacino Performance- A toughie, I'll stray away from perhaps the obvious choice and submit Scarecrow.

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