I revisited The Offer recently, a brilliant and sorely underseen Paramount+ limited series about the making of The Godfather. It’s fun and pulpy and engaging as hell, and even if you’re not a huge fan of The Godfather (which… sure, I guess?), I highly recommend it on its own merits.
The character of Al Pacino, played by Anthony Ippolito, has a relatively small role, but he stands out for how subdued and meek he is as the stage actor who would soon become one of the most famous film stars in the world.
I also finally got around to seeing Dog Day Afternoon recently. It’s one of those movies that I’ve long been aware of and felt vaguely ashamed about never seeing, especially as a huge fan of both New York City-based stories and crime dramas generally.
I’ll save my thoughts on Dog Day for below but suffice to say that the combination of seeing The Offer and beholding Pacino and John Cazale together in Dog Day Afternoon compelled me to immediately run back The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II.
Since I’m now fully in an Al Pacino state of mind, let’s run through his lifetime of performances while trying to figure out which version of Pacino is peak Pacino.
That which we shall never discuss again
Much like Sil from The Sopranos, we’ll allow ourselves an occasional I tried to get out, but… other than that, we simply do not acknowledge Part III.
Period.
There’s a chunk of movies I just haven’t seen
Mea culpa, okay? I haven’t seen stuff ranging from The Son of No One to Bobby Dearfield to Scarecrow. The guy’s made a ton of flicks over a lifetime, and I’m sure there’s some spun gold I’ve as yet not had the opportunity to behold.
Really good but not completely for me or not fully on my radar these days
I’m wildly open to revising my opinion on movies in this category, because Pacino is at least pretty great in everything.
Did I tear up when I saw Scent of a Woman in the theater back in the day? Probably, but as there’s no video footage of me available to my knowledge (thankfully), I’m safe denying it. I haven’t revisited it since, and have no compelling desire to do so.
One of my quirks perhaps as a crime drama junkie is that I’m neither a Michael Mann nor Brian De Palma superfan (though they each are super talented for sure). Therefore, I’m not all about Heat or Scarface as many dudes of my generation are. I take zero umbrage with such dudes.
Peak bonkers Pacino
This is a special category I’ve created to celebrate the incredibly over-the-top, caricature-of-himself-but-we-still-love-him Pacino.
Co-winners in this category include The Devil’s Advocate and Any Given Sunday.
Oh, and then there’s this.
No, it’s not AI, I can assure you, meaning artificial intelligence in this case. Dunkaccino is all too real.
Peak ‘90s Pacino
Carlito’s Way is one of my favorite flicks of all time, and I’d argue it’s a Mount Rushmore New York City movie. It’s also a De Palma-directed movie, so you know what, maybe I am a superfan of his?
Anyway, Pacino is fabulous in it, ‘70s gritty and glitzy NYC is incredible, and it also arguably one of Sean Penn’s best ever performances as well.
Donnie Brasco on the other hand shows off Pacino’s brilliance in understated mode, and here too he’s paired with an equally understated and outstanding performance from Johnny Depp.
And that brings us to the filmic version of Glengarry Glen Ross, where we get both the understated and over the top versions of Pacino as Richard Roma, and all together it’s off the charts great.
Late era Pacino is great era Pacino
Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino are easily my two favorite film directors, and so it doesn’t surprise me that Pacino was fantastic when he had the opportunity to work with them.
Both roles came relatively recently, with his turns as Jimmy Hoffa in The Irishman and Marvin Shwarz in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Of the two, I’m particularly taken with his small role – nearly a cameo, really – in Once Upon a Time as a quirky but perceptive and persuasive casting agent who compels Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton to head off to Italy to star in Spaghetti Westerns.
‘70s Pacino as god tier
With respect to Serpico, which I need to revisit, I’m so glad that I had the chance to catch Dog Day Afternoon and The Godfather (Parts I and II) in quick succession last week.
Over the roughly six hours of movie time of the first two Godfather films, we get to see Michael Corleone evolve from a relative outsider when it came to the family business to a hardened, cold-hearted crime boss who bulldozed all humanity out of his life in pursuit of power.
It’s a stunning performance, and is even more striking when you then waltz into Dog Day, a near real time adaptation of the true story of a botched Brooklyn bank robbery in 1972. Pacino’s Sonny is almost the opposite of Michael Corleone: unplanned, heart on his sleeve, often bumbling, not particularly tethered to reality, and even funny.
If anything, Sonny and Michael share a core rage that explodes when prodded by the wrong people at the wrong time. But while Michael borders on cruel and machine-like in his obsessions with power and revenge, Sonny is deeply human, even relatable in terms of how he reacts when pushed to the brink, given the many broiling forces that propelled him to attempt to rob a bank in the first place.
So I’d say if I had to pick my two pinnacles of Al Pacino’s acting mastery, it’s Michael Corleone and Sonny Wortzik.