When I ran into Al Pacino in the streets of New York the other day, and wanted to say something memorable to him, the first thing that came to mind was "'Glengarry Glen Ross' is one of my favorite movies!" (Later on I kicked myself for not praising a film closer to his heart, the outstanding documentary "Looking for Richard").
Pacino is just one reason this film is among the best showcases of superior acting we have. It was Pacino who was nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar, but the most vibrantly desperate actor in this film full of end-of-their-rope flunkies is Jack Lemmon, never better than here, as a true Willy Loman type driven to contemplate serious crimes by his desire to move up the sales ladder at cost-cutting real estate brokerage. He must fend off Pacino, an intense Ed Harris and a cowering Alan Arkin. The winner gets a car, the runner up a set of steak knives. "Third place is your fired," shouts Alec Baldwin, in his most intense screen performance, as part of a brilliant diatribe in which he eviscerates and emasculates the underachieving salesmen.
Add Kevin Spacey and David Pryce to this marvelous cast, who get to speak some of the best lines David Mamet ever committed to paper, and you've got an intensely satisfying tour-de-force that's constantly riveting, despite the fact that the locale rarely shifts from the office and a nearby bar. Some movies written by Mamet are stultifying, since all the parts must perfectly blend for an audience to appreciate a filmed play. ("American Buffalo," despite the presence of Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz, is one of the worst sleep-inducers out there).
But "Glengarry Glen Ross" is not for a moment dull, so colorful are the ideas of alienation and desperation, and so verdant is the dialogue, chock-full of perfectly intoned f-words. Baldwin's 15-minute monologue -- his only scene -- is the stand-out sequence, but Pacino also does a so-smooth-it's-chilling monologue with Pryce, the sweating potential customer wooed by Pacino's Ricky Roma, the current sales leader. Spacey, in one of his first prominent roles, plays a rule-enforcing office manager who absorbs insults like a battered sponge; Harris and Arkin sweat and kvetch aggressively and passively, respectively; and Lemmon is simply transcendent as he stammers toward his inevitable fate.
The ensemble effect is simply smoldering. Go rent "Glengarry Glen Ross."
Pacino is just one reason this film is among the best showcases of superior acting we have. It was Pacino who was nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar, but the most vibrantly desperate actor in this film full of end-of-their-rope flunkies is Jack Lemmon, never better than here, as a true Willy Loman type driven to contemplate serious crimes by his desire to move up the sales ladder at cost-cutting real estate brokerage. He must fend off Pacino, an intense Ed Harris and a cowering Alan Arkin. The winner gets a car, the runner up a set of steak knives. "Third place is your fired," shouts Alec Baldwin, in his most intense screen performance, as part of a brilliant diatribe in which he eviscerates and emasculates the underachieving salesmen.
Add Kevin Spacey and David Pryce to this marvelous cast, who get to speak some of the best lines David Mamet ever committed to paper, and you've got an intensely satisfying tour-de-force that's constantly riveting, despite the fact that the locale rarely shifts from the office and a nearby bar. Some movies written by Mamet are stultifying, since all the parts must perfectly blend for an audience to appreciate a filmed play. ("American Buffalo," despite the presence of Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz, is one of the worst sleep-inducers out there).
But "Glengarry Glen Ross" is not for a moment dull, so colorful are the ideas of alienation and desperation, and so verdant is the dialogue, chock-full of perfectly intoned f-words. Baldwin's 15-minute monologue -- his only scene -- is the stand-out sequence, but Pacino also does a so-smooth-it's-chilling monologue with Pryce, the sweating potential customer wooed by Pacino's Ricky Roma, the current sales leader. Spacey, in one of his first prominent roles, plays a rule-enforcing office manager who absorbs insults like a battered sponge; Harris and Arkin sweat and kvetch aggressively and passively, respectively; and Lemmon is simply transcendent as he stammers toward his inevitable fate.
The ensemble effect is simply smoldering. Go rent "Glengarry Glen Ross."