We left with questions....

Rating: 5/10 (23 October 2005)

My son and I went to see this movie recently. We are both admirers of Pacino for his intense portrayals of whomever he is being at the moment, so we felt that we had a safe bet (pun intended) with this movie. The last movie of Al's that we saw together was Devil's Advocate, and that sparked some lively discussion after viewing it.
This time as we left the theater we were groping for something to talk about. All I could do was ask, "What was this movie trying to say? Do you know?"
He didn't.
I said, "In the case of Devil's Advocate, at least there was a message--that ego, vanity, materialism, and self serving ultimately resulted in failure in life, and that if you sell out your principles you flounder on life's reef mentally and emotionally, and perhaps physically as well.
"This was Devil's Advocate without any message, at least as far as I could tell. With maybe a little Simone thrown in...." He hadn't seen that one so I had to explain that Simone was a creation of the main character that ended up running amok, or at least at cross purposes with the motives of her creator.
Then we both wondered if Pacino and company were as bankrupt as the main character in this movie. Even at his best, Pacino's character (Walter Abrams) was a parasite. He performed no useful function in society, only lived off the baser interests of low-level humanity who want to get something for free in life. In other words he capitalized on human greed to make his living. So was this movie a behind-the-scenes look into the lives of Pacino and company? Have they hit the bottom of the creativity well and did they just grind out a movie because they needed the money? Does their money slip through their fingers like it did for Walter? I really can't think of any reason to make this movie other than somebody needed some quick cash.
Another question we had was what happened in the case of Walter's protégé? OK, so if you ride a false wave of success you eventually crash, but what was it that caused the crash in this case? I just KNEW he was going to blow it, but when it happened I knew not why. I mean, all of a sudden he lost his gift for picking winners. Why? Had he quit doing his homework thinking he had become some sort of god with a permanent gift? Was he too caught up in the New York materialistic lifestyle to bother studying the teams any more? He had time to work on his body, why not time to study the teams and their players?
Did he just become cocky and arrogant and was that supposed to be his fatal flaw?
In the end, we wondered, did the main character improve any? His protégé left him and went back to his home and took on a serving-humanity lifestyle. He had had it with the Big Apple and its hustling ways. But what about Walter? Did he quit committing slow suicide (smoking)? We gave him the benefit of the doubt in that he probably learned to appreciate his wife who stood by him through it all, loser that he was. (And speaking of his wife, what was her motivation anyway? Why did she love him still when she deserved so much better in a man? What was his appeal?)
The movie ended giving us little (if any) hope that Walter wasn't going to continue to be a loser until he gasped his last. Did he go on to turn his life around, get an honest job, and become a caring family man and a credit to the human race?
We both didn't want to put any money on it.
(Five stars for the intense acting which carried this movie--but which maybe had no business being made in the first place.)