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List Price: $19.99 | | Label: Miramax
Salesrank: 42627
Released: July 20, 2004 |
| Our Price: $4.74 |
| Used Price: $0.72 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Academy Award(R) winners Al Pacino (Best Actor, SCENT OF A WOMAN, 1992) and Kim Basinger (Best Supporting Actress, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, 1997) bring the star power to this powerful and provocative thriller! For old-school public relations kingpin Eli Wurman (Pacino), there's never been a crisis he couldn't fix or a scandal he couldn't handle – until now! When Eli's best client (Ryan O'Neal -- MALIBU'S MOST WANTED) and his starlet girlfriend (Téa Leoni -- HOLLYWOOD ENDING) become tangled in a particularly messy situation, Eli ends up seeing more than he's supposed to. Now, the man who made it his business to know everything suddenly knows too much! With an unforgettable performance critics are calling one of Al Pacino's best, you won't want to miss a minute of this gripping motion picture.
Description of People I Know:
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
People I Know Reviews:
Poorly Written-Poorly Acted-Badly Cast 
2008-09-20 - It isn't the film, it's the casting, y'all. I saw it because it is based on someone from my hometown who moved to NYC and became a publicist. Al Pacino no more looks like this man in real life than I do Ava Gardner. And, believe me, I don't look anything like her. You do remember Ava, don't you? Al Pacino was just sleepwalking through the entire film. Who cast all of these well known actors? They simply do not fit. This should have been a gritty film if they were going to end it the way they did. It doesn't know if it wants to be a musical, a Disney film, or an Indy. The whole film is kind of fragmented and doesn't make sense. Too much material for such a little film. I think this was the start of Al Pacino's cinema downfall. He looks and talks the same in all his films now. He looks bored. He could have done a super job in this had the story been true. It isn't. If you're going to base a film on a living person, then the story should be at least 5 percent accurate. I was very disappointed with every aspect of this film.
Same movie under a different title
2008-02-15 - This flick was released under a different title, so it remains a sealed item, in my collection of his work.
Aging alone is sad for an actor 
2007-11-07 - This film is about a period that has come to an end, a complete end, before the earthquake, mudslide and volcanic eruption known as the Twin Tower Terrorist Attack or 9/11 for short. New York politics, and beyond American politics seen through the eyes of a mediocre, Jewish PR agent who is losing his main customer and who is still giving time to Afro-American causes not understanding that they don't want and they don't need white Jewish good-doing benevolent liberals to take care of them. They have come of age and 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 and they just want to lie low and disappear from the public eye before it's too late. A new generation has not come out of the wings yet and they are more or less obliged to last a little longer. The subject of the film is that trite and that superficial if not superfluous, and 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 really looks the part of the poor absolutely conscious old man who is doing one more gig before going out for ever to some solitary and 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 and 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 individually so that they end up shining bright in a dark alley and blinding us at the same time instead of making other actors sparkle and glow.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Kind of a silly movie 
2007-08-05 - It's sunday afternoon and I'm hungover. This was just on IFC. Or Sundance. I won't get into why I think this movie is silly or bland to the point of being boring. I'd be preaching to the choir from the looks of it. And I won't bother prefacing by saying that I really like Pacino in other movies and think he's as good as his rep has him (usually). Although I think he might have sunk this movie a bit. Like the movie couldn't be its own thing because it got its dream lead in Pacino and turned it into a vanity project. Too reverent, in other words, and not helping the cause.
But the thing is I kept watching to see what would happen. I did other things while the movie played, but I kept coming back. So it did have some pull. Maybe no more than a Law and Order episode.
One silly thing I will mention. The assistant. The longhaired kid. "I want to go back to Seattle. I want to go back to grunge." Wha? I tried to figure out how long this movie has been on the shelf after that line. Was the script written in the early 90s and just never updated?
It's the thought that counts
2007-02-23 - Upfront-This isn't Al Pacino's best ever role...indeed,it isn't even one of his best...The film,while choppy and toiling under a few plotline holes,nonetheless DOES have something to say...The fact that so many of the reviewers here have used the word"leftist" and/or the term "leftist conspiracy"when describing the story this film tells is instructional,and the fact that so many of these same reviewers scoff at the notion,or deride it ALONE make this a film worth looking at..
I have to wonder if,perhaps,there is a right-wing denial agenda at work in those who made it thier whole point to be critical of the alledged"left wing"bias they claim to detect in this movie?Sure,"People I Know"is fiction,and as such deserves only our critical review with regard to plotting(note the afore-mentioned holes in this department)acting(great to excellent for the most part,especially Pacino)and directing(acceptable,if somewhat pedestrian),but since so many of the reviewers here have made it such a point to nitpick a FICTIONAL "leftist"conspiracy that they see as being the whole point of this film,let me point out that,alas,in today's world the real evil comes,conspiratorially,from the right(and,let's be honest,hasn't it always?)...in a world in which a REAL right wing cabal,including both the president and the vice president can,among other things,SECRETLY involve us in an unnecessary war,while publicly lying in order to gain our support,can SECRETLY conspire with the fuel companies not only to keep us in that war but to deliver them massive profits at our expense,can SECRETLY conspire with extremist religious groups to defeat scientific truth,can SECRETLY establish and run prisons where captives are tortured into making bogus confessions,ect,ect,the desire to "expose"the FICTIONAL "leftist"paranoia alledgedly running throughout this film would be laughable except for the fact that these reviewers take it all so seriously...And,in the end,such reviews themselves become something of a right-wing conspiracy against truth,in that,in assaulting the crebibility of a FICTIONAL left-wing conspiracy they strive to divert our attentions away from all of those REAL LIFE everyday right-wing plots that have done so very much to destroy american prestige,and curtail the liberties guaranteed by the constitution and the bill of rights...Making a film about these right-wing plots,and the arrogance of those involved in them WOULD make a better,if a more frightening movie...
