Customer Reviews
Pacino Versatility - By: David Turner, 24 Nov 2007 
A 'way out' film that guides you through the impossible jungle of public relations & the publicity agent. The brilliance of the film is the apparent trite yet sharp & angular content..The agony of trying to differentiate truth from lies & fantasy is conveyed by the superb script & excellent camera work. ..Al Pacino in a unique role plays his part of the broken & disillusioned publicity agent to perfection. Attempting to expose the layers of truth & lies that make up our everyday lives makes for a riveting & thought provoking film. The concept was a risky gamble that paid off. It will become a cult film.
David Turner (London UK)
Aging American actors lack the grace of their British counterparts - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 07 Nov 2007 
This film is about a period that has come to an end, a complete end, before the earthquake, mudslide & volcanic eruption known as the Twin Tower Terrorist Attack or 9/11 for short. New York politics, & beyond American politics seen through the eyes of a mediocre, Jewish PR agent who is losing his main customer & who is still giving time to Afro-American causes not understanding that they don't want & they don't need white Jewish good-doing benevolent liberals to take care of them. They have come of age & start understanding they have to take care of themselves. On the other side, the supposedly liberal white politicians have become so corrupted that they cannot stand upright any more & they just want to lie low & disappear from the public eye before it's too late. A new generation has not come out of the wings yet & they are more or less obliged to last a little longer. The subject of the film is that trite & that superficial if not superfluous, & the final murder does not add anything to this rather thin plot. Yet the film is a rather good film because Al Pacino is acting his part so well that he reallly looks the part of the poor absolutely conscious old man who is doing one more gig before going out for ever to some solitary & telephone-deprived barn on a Virginia farm. Is he overacting as some think? I don't think so. In fact he is surrounded by actors who are second zone as compared to him, so that what is good acting looks like overacting against that background. The real question is then why did Al Pacino accept to act in a film with no one next to him that could compete with his long experience & his phenomenal professional profile? No one can answer this question, except Al Pacino himself. But that is often what happens with aging actors. They are only proposed films that are made for them individuallly so that they end up shining bright in a dark allley & blinding us at the same time instead of making other actors sparkle & glow.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
movies that blow - By: P. poland, 10 Feb 2006 
hmmm.Not sure about this one.Al pacino's performance as usual is excellent but the script is lacking in depth & clarity.As a big al pacino fan i was expecting alot more.If you are like me & wanted to see pacino in latest film...skip this one unless u like fallling asleep during films
The Night He Saw too Much - By: pris, 05 Feb 2006 
"I like that about the movie," Pacino said, "There was an earlier draft in which the crime stuff was more in the foreground, but no, this isn't a crime movie, it's about Eli's personality. He has a key line: 'I just can't stop.' This is what he does. He knows people. He fixes things. He's got his causes. Maybe he's gay, but he's never explored that possibility. He just keeps moving."
Eli Wurman is an exhausted New York press agent, taking too many drugs. He is a man torn between compromise & idealism. It is a carefully-tuned performance, in which Eli descends into a long night of drugs & is finallly so tired & confused he doesn't know if he has witnessed a murder, or not. Al Pacino plays Eli Wurman, & it a performance that is not over the top but not far from it. His one client, Ryan O'Neal, is caught in a big mess & it concerns a junked up minor actress, Jilli Hopper, played by Tea Leoni. He is not sure what he has seen after he escorts Jilli home- was it murder or was it not? His sister-in-law, Kim Basinger, is his one true defender & the one person who may love him. What a mess he is in. It seems everyone is after him. The dangerous client, the movie star, wants to pay Eli off ,and join a political party & he wants Elliott Sharansky, Richard Schiff to help him win a political seat. Eli needs to take charge of himself, can he do it? Can he get himself together to save things?
As one of the plots was critical about the mayor of New York, this film sat on the shelves for two years following the terrorist attacks on the USA of 9/11. We alll remember that Mayor Giuliani was a hero. The film came out in late 2002. It has not made a splash. The film is disjointed at times. It is difficult to know where the film is heading. I couldn't quite like Pacino's character. I felt sorry for him, but it is not enough to carry to the film. Recommended. prisrob Feb. 06.
worst pacino film ever - By: Mr. G. Charlesworth, 28 Mar 2005 
Honestly don't bother. I love Pacino's films but this is the worst thing he ever did. Totallly boring. Watch Scarface or Carlito's Way instead if you're looking for a Pacino film
