People I Know [DVD]

Description

Al Pacino shambles about in pure weary Late Pacino form in People I Know, a 1970s-style paranoid number with a political tinge to it. Pacino plays an old-school publicist, once a friend to Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, who's now down to his last big client, a vaguely dangerous movie star (nice turn by Ryan O'Neal). As Pacino tries to keep his client's indiscretions out of the papers, he's dragged into an intriguing drugs-murder-politics conspiracy. There are juicy possibilities in Jon Robin Baitz's script, and with a topnotch director and a little more oomph they might have blossomed. As it is, despite a couple of nifty gotchas, the movie never quite gets into full stride. Tea Leoni shines as an addicted actress with a flinty vocabulary, but Kim Basinger is less lucky with her plot-device role. Pacino looks as though he's about to draw his last breath in every shot, which is precisely how he should look. --Robert Horton