Flick of The Day: Glengarry Glen Ross

David Mamet was one of the great voices in American theatre in the late 70's and early 80's. As a playwright, he was a founding member of the legendary Atlantic Theatre Company, winning acclaim for his 1984 play Glengarry Glen Ross, which he adapted for the screen in this 1992 drama which is today's flick of the day. Mamet's writing is heavy in dialogue which is itself fast paced and peppered with scatological language, and it reeks of the stage. However it is the kind of rich language that draws the best out of actors. Apart from his theatrical work, he has a rich body of film work with particular highlights being his Oscar winning script for The Verdict and The Untouchables.

Glengarry Glen Ross

A simple tale of the goings on behind the scenes at a real estate office in Chicago, this film has an ensemble cast of some of the best acting talent in recent memory. Al Pacino is cocky top salesman Ricky Roma, Jack Lemmon is the ageing salesman living on past glories, Alan Arkin and Ed Harris are disgruntled and desperate while Kevin Spacey is the much put upon office manager. In a role created for the film, Alec Baldwin steals the film as a hard nosed motivational speaker. Times are hard at Premiere Properties with the pressure on the salesmen to deliver land sales in a downturn. They bitch and moan about the leads they are given and generally fail to sell apart from the big swinging dick Ricky Roma. The plot centres around a theft at the office but ultimately this is a character study of men under pressure, with a tense atmosphere reminiscent of something like 12 Angry Men.

Perhaps the strength of James Foley's direction is to keep the camera moving around the theatre like sets, to make this feel less like a play. It is not fully successful however as you can't really escape the origins of the tale. Mamet's dialogue is his greatest strength but it often feel over the top and almost unrealistic here. That said, it is terribly enjoyable to see greats like Pacino and Lemmon and Spacey chew through the scenery in capital lettered verbiage. 

Blake: You got leads. Mitch & Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them. You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, *you are* shit, hit the bricks pal, and beat it, 'cause you are going *out*. 

Shelley Levene: The leads are weak. 

Blake: "The leads are weak." The fucking leads are weak? You're weak. I've been in this business fifteen years... 

Dave Moss: What's your name? 

Blake: Fuck you. That's my name. 

[Moss laughs] 

Blake: You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an eighty thousand dollar BMW. *That's* my name.

A tour de force then, but also a dark look at the harsh realities of the working world and the lengths people will go to, to survive. Lemmon's salesman is a loser but at heart a good family man while Pacino's Roma is a slimy charlatan yet one is a failure and the other prospers. There is a morality tale in there somewhere. 

Very much a character study, this is worth seeing if only for Mamet's dialogue and the excellent performances from the ensemble cast. It couldn't be called a compelling drama for very little happens but for sharp dialogue and tense well acted scenes, this is hard to beat. 

Flick of The Day: And Justice For All...

Perhaps best remembered today for Al Pacino's ranting monologue which ends the film, or perhaps for the various pastiches and homages of it, today's flick of the day is Norman Jewison's And Justice For All... A big hit in its day garnering another Oscar nomination for Pacino, it is a film which is rarely given its due in comparison to other films of the era for two reasons. Firstly it is possessed of a truly dire late 70's Disco soundtrack that would not be out of place in an episode of Cagney & Lacey and which dates the film horribly getting in the way of what is a fine tale. The second reason is the inconsistent tone of the picture, veering from a courtroom drama to light comedy, leaving the viewer never quite sure whether it is fish or foul. This is unfortunate because at its heart is a decent story of good versus evil and one of Al Pacino's more varied performances of the decade that built his reputation as perhaps the best actor of his generation. 

And Justice For All...

Al Pacino is Arthur Kirkland, a rabble rousing but ultimately idealistic young lawyer working the courthouse in Baltimore. As the film opens we meet Arthur's varied cast of clients from wealthy philanderer's like Dominic Chianese's Carl to downtrodden folk seeking justice. It becomes apparent that Arthur is not your average lawyer, with an almost unrealistic zeal for the truth, exemplified by his willingness to attempt to knock out a Judge he felt was obstructing his case. Indeed at the beginning of film, Arthur is in present for contempt of court for this attempted assault on Judge Fleming, played with a dark sliminess by John Forsythe. It is this kind of farcical event that leaves you unsure of the true tone of the film. How often outside of Hollywood could a lawyer punch a Judge and still practice law? In any case, the thrust of the movie revolves around the arrest and trial of the aforementioned Judge for a brutal rape. You would imagine Arthur would be delighted to see his nemesis get his comeuppance and perhaps he is though no sooner has he digested the news of the arrest that he is approached by Judge Fleming  to act as his defence in the trial. Fleming proceeds to coerce Arthur into taking his case on, promising to see him disbarred otherwise. Arthur's attempts to exonerate this odious Judge are at the centre of the film though they are only one strand of the various problems and sub-plots that beset Arthur before his final showdown in court. Will he defend a man he hates?

Pacino excels in the role of Arthur, perhaps because it is so different to the usual performances we have becomes used to over the years. Much like his equally talented colleague Robert De Niro, over the past 15 years or so Pacino has retreated into playing a pastiche of himself. No matter the role, Pacino's characters are the always over the top and loud. There is nothing wrong with this per se, it just feels like he is operating within himself, not pushing for the performance. Perhaps this is natural in middle age but is a delight to seem him a young man again in the role of Arthur, giving the kind of wild eyed and varied performance he can deliver. 

"You're out of order! You're out of order! The whole trial is out of order! They're out of order! That man, that sick, crazy, depraved man, raped and beat that woman there, and he'd like to do it again! He *told* me so! It's just a show! It's a show! It's "Let's Make A Deal"! "Let's Make A Deal"! Hey Frank, you wanna "Make A Deal"? I got an insane judge who likes to beat the shit out of women! Whaddya wanna gimme Frank, 3 weeks probation?"

If one Judge is Arthur's nemesis then another is the closest thing he has to friend. A criminally underused Jack Warden is Judge Rayford, an interesting character who is semi-suicidal but has a fondness for Arthur yet this is never developed too deeply.

Great performances aside, it is difficult to get past the tonal shifts that cause the film to stutter. One moment, the film is almost biting in its social commentary on the dark corruption endemic at the lower levels of the American Justice system and the next is some grand farce with Arthur taking his fear of flying up in a helicopter ride above the city with Warden's Judge Rayford in a scene that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of M.A.S.H. It is unfortunate because if Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin's script could have taken a tone and stuck to it, this could have been a classic rather then just a film that has more positives then negatives. The is essential cinema if only to see the development of cinema in the late '70s and for the work of Pacino, but it could have been more. C'est la vie.

Flick of The Day: Dog Day Afternoon

The truth is something which Hollywood has a difficult relationship with. How often have you seen "Based on a true story" or the decidedly more vague "Based on real events" only to find out that reality is a different story entirely. Today's flick of the day then is a rare thing, a Hollywood picture that is a true story that occurred on a Summer afternoon in August 1972 in Brooklyn.

Dog Day Afternoon [Blu-ray]

On a sunny afternoon just before closing time, three men enter a branch of the Chase Manhattan in Brooklyn, New York. They are there to rob the bank, each for different reasons. They are led by Sonny, a manic Al Pacino as a desperate loser trying to raise money for his lover's sex change operation and Sal, played by the brilliant John Cazale. What was meant to be a quick job quickly goes awry and within the hour, the bank is surrounded by hundreds of police, TV cameras and crowds of onlookers. The police negotiator is the hapless Moretti played by Charles Durning. Of course it soon descends into a circus, and a panicked Sonny requests a plane and plots their escape. However, it is apparent that the end is nigh when the FBI, led by the cold Agent Sheldon, take over the negotiations.

Directed by Sydney Lumet, whose work we have seen before here on The Daily Flick with The Verdict and The Pawnbroker, this film is a small triumph. By remaining true to the real life story, it gives the film a documentary feel which is heightened by the use of long angles from TV cameras and helicopter footage. As the emotional heart of the film, Al Pacino carries a weight on his shoulders but he delivers in style. His characterisation of Sonny is filled with pathos and a healthy dose of reality. His performance carries the film but is ably supported by Cazale, an actor whose filmography though only 5 films long reads like a list of the great film's of the 1970s. 

How close to reality is the film? Well without giving too much away in terms of plot, it keeps the basic premise of the story but changes events slightly to aid in the telling. The character of Sonny, was based on John Wojtowicz, and after using the funds he received from selling his story to pay for his lover's sex change died of cancer in 2006.

Sonny: Kiss me. 

Det. Sgt. Eugene Moretti: What? 

Sonny: Kiss me. When I'm being fucked, I like to get kissed a lot.

The real genius of the film is managing to portray the lunacy of the situation without downplaying the seriousness of it. This is no romantic tale, neither side cover themselves in glory. The thieves appear to have no clue how much trouble they are in while the police seem hell bent on ending the siege in a hail of gunfire.

One of the classic films of a great decade for cinema, Dog Day Afternoon is led by a bravura performance from Al Pacino as a classic antihero. The film makes great use of the location shooting and like so many films of the period examines contemporary issues of race, sexuality and crime while still providing an intelligent, entertaining film. All in all, a film that has to be seen.

Flick of The Day: Scarface (1983)

"Say Hello to my little friend...", so ends one of the most overblown and hyper violent gangster epics ever to hit the silver screen. A film that was largely derided or worse still ignored by critics upon its release in 1983, criticising it for its violence and supposed glamorisation of the drugs trade, something that was very much a no-no in the Reagan '80s.

Scarface (Widescreen Two-Disc Anniversary Edition)

This film, scripted by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian De Palma bears little resemblance to the original 1932 version directed by Howard Hawks apart from the fact that both films would prove controversial upon release. After being rejected by censors in 1931, Hawks was forced to add an alternate ending where the gangster hands himself over to the police as opposed to going down in a hail of bullets and the subtitle "The Shame of The Nation" added. De Palma's version would prove equally controversial with a number of the most violent scenes removed  to give the film an R rating in the United States as opposed to the dreaded X rating.

For the uninitiated, this is your classic tale of rise and fall. Al Pacino is Tony Montana, a Cuban immigrant who goes straight from Castro's jails to the streets of Miami. Quickly rising from the streets to the drug trade, he eventually usurps his boss, Frank Lopez played by the excellently over the top Robert Loggia, to become top dog.  Of course before long, it all ends in tears. That's the interesting part though.

This is very much Al Pacino's film though. He drives it from beginning to end in a stunning performance as an almost personification of evil. He would go on later in his career to play the devil himself in The Devils Advocate but this the scarier performance. Throughout the film, his character keeps everyone including the audience on edge, as you know he could snap into violence at any moment.

Scarface (Universal Cinema Classics)

The film is over long, coming in at an ass numbing 170 minutes and at times the violence is excessive, though not gratuitous. Excessive in the sense that you gradually become desensitised to it, its loses its shock effect as the film drags on, though the chainsaw in the bathroom scene early in the film still retains that shock effect nearly 30 years after its release. I don't feel the violence is gratuitous in that it is necessary to remain true to a realistic portrayal of the excesses and violence of the drugs trade in the 1980s. However for its flaws, this remains a modern classic, which as a cinephile you have to see if only for the spectacle and Pacino's grand standing performance. This is epic film-making of the highest order.