Michael Mann Superb. Acting Not So Hot.

Rating: 5/10 (12 November 2017)

This film is a Michael Mann success except when it comes to directing his two stars. The feeling is that the stars have free directorial control and management is out to lunch. The budget for the film was $60 million and the profit announced was just $7 million. Could have done better in the stock market. Disappointing return on investment. But not for the actors. Once again, Pacino brings his Scarface performance to the film with constant gum chewing and eyes bugging out as imaginative, new, acting props. In what critics characterize as the most beautiful example of true acting, the coffee shop dialogue, DeNiro is back to his old acting "business" where his eyes look at everything else on the set while he talks to Pacino. Audiences must be wondering what he sees besides the camera and crew. Both gentlemen slide through their lines in vague whispers resembling boxers poking and testing each other so they can get it over with and go home to their twenty million dollar paychecks.