With greased-back hair, dainty spectacles and bristly chops, Pacino is a former Little League baseball coach turned locksmith. But \u2013 symbolism alert! \u2013 who holds the key to his clenched heart? One scene gives good cringe: over a would-be romantic dinner with a bank teller (Holly Hunter), he starts reminiscing about his great lost love, oblivious to his date\u2019s escalating indignation.<\/p>\n
Feline good \u2026\u00a0Pacino in Manglehorn. Photograph: Cinematic\/Alamy<\/p>\n
No surprise that Oliver Stone\u2019s football drama is frenzied, overloaded and unsubtle. At least it has at its centre a performance of style and grace by Pacino. He plays the idealistic coach of the fictional Miami Sharks, who sees the game as a test of character. \u201cOn any given Sunday, you\u2019re gonna win or you\u2019re gonna lose,\u201d he says. \u201cThe point is \u2013 can you win or lose like a man?\u201d<\/p>\n
Christopher Nolan\u2019s atmospheric remake of a 1997 Norwegian thriller puts Pacino in the Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd role of the cop whose guilt over past and present misdeeds hounds him through the sleepless nights of a new murder case. Fascinating to see both Pacino and Robin Williams (as the unctuous killer) dialling down their usual mania for the most part.<\/p>\n
17. The Devil\u2019s Advocate (1997)<\/p>\n
This Faustian horror-comedy starring Pacino as the devil, exerting his malign influence through his own law firm, will be a keeper for any fans of Shouty Al<\/a>. Others will tire more quickly of his carnival barker routine and this one-joke movie in which he tempts greenhorn attorney Keanu Reeves over to the dark side. The satanic mood is enhanced by the use of Donald Trump\u2019s apartment as a set.<\/p>\n \u2018Bombast was part of what we were trying to say\u2019 \u2026 Pacino as Tony Montana. Photograph: Ronald Grant<\/p>\n It was Pacino who proposed a remake of the 1932 gangster classic (\u201cI want to be Paul Muni,\u201d he said) and original director Sidney Lumet who made his character, Tony Montana, a Cuban refugee arriving in Miami in 1980 as part of the Mariel boatlift. Any objections to the overkill of Pacino\u2019s showboating turn and Brian De Palma\u2019s adrenalised direction can be easily countered. \u201cBombast was part of what we were trying to say,\u201d said<\/a> Pacino. None of which makes the film and his performance any less exhausting or impoverished an experience.<\/p>\n Forget received wisdom: some value the troubled third instalment of Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s gangster saga above its predecessors. Headmaster of that school of thought is Luca Guadagnino, who praised its \u201clonging\u201d and \u201cmelancholy\u201d<\/a> and called it \u201cthe best of the three \u2026 Part II is too perfect and The Godfather is too legendary\u201d. For all the movie\u2019s flaws, it is impossible not to be moved by Pacino, his gaze mournful and haunted (though he wasn\u2019t even 50 when the film was made). His silent scream in the final moments is a moving expression of grief and despair.<\/p>\n 14. Sea of Love (1989)<\/p>\n This fine, lean thriller, scripted by Richard Price, tempted Pacino back to cinema after four years spent licking his wounds \u2013 and rediscovering himself on stage \u2013 after the public humiliation of Revolution, Hugh Hudson\u2019s infamous flop about the American war of independence. Pacino is affecting as the frazzled cop falling for a suspect (Ellen Barkin), while hunting a murderer who lures victims via lonely hearts ads.<\/p>\n 13. Looking for Richard (1996)\u2018A revelation\u2019 \u2026 Pacino in Looking for Richard. Photograph: Collection Christophel\/Alamy<\/p>\n Lightness doesn\u2019t come easily to Pacino (see \u2026 And Justice For All or Author! Author!) but he is rather a fragrant presence in this documentary, which he also directed, where he endeavours to get to the bottom of Richard III while playing the role. Adam Mars-Jones called Pacino\u2019s appearance as himself \u201ca revelation, coming from an actor who has studiously avoided comic likenesses on screen\u201d. Of course, that was before Jack and Jill (\u201cSay hello to my chocolate blend \u2026\u201d<\/a>).<\/p>\n Protests by gay activists disrupted shooting and dogged the release of William Friedkin\u2019s film maudit, starring Pacino as a cop going undercover to catch a killer in New York\u2019s leather scene. Convinced that the movie was exploitative, the actor donated his fee to LGBTQ+ charities, which was generous but also shortsighted: Cruising has aged brilliantly, and plays now like a clever critique of homophobia as well as a daring outlier in an age of timidity.<\/p>\n It is impossible to say how many people Pacino has called a cunt. But surely he has never delivered the insult with more relish than he does to Kevin Spacey\u2019s office manager<\/a> in this film of David Mamet\u2019s Pulitzer-winning play about cut-throat real-estate salesmen. Mamet adds a sizzling prologue with a shark-like new character played by Alec Baldwin, while Pacino dominates as smooth-talking top-seller Ricky Roma. He received an Oscar nomination (his seventh of nine) and returned to the play on Broadway in 2012, this time in the Jack Lemmon role of washed-up veteran Shelley Levene.<\/p>\n \u2018A corroded soul\u2019 \u2026 Pacino and Kitty Winn as addicts. Photograph: Everett Collection\/Alamy<\/p>\n In Pacino\u2019s first film, Me, Natalie (1969), he was glimpsed briefly as a Jack-the-lad prowling the dancefloor. In his second, co-written by Joan Didion, he was the lead: a heroin addict (\u201cI ain\u2019t hooked, I\u2019m just chippin\u2019\u201d) who introduces his new girlfriend (Kitty Winn) to the needle. At peak prettiness here, Pacino initially seems ill-suited to inhabiting such a corroded soul. That only makes his decline more pronounced: he overdoses in a sex worker\u2019s apartment, then has to be dragged into the bathroom along with her wailing baby before her next client arrives.<\/p>\n An old lags\u2019 reunion, with movie mobsters Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel drawn back to their capo, Martin Scorsese. Pacino, 79, and working with the director for the first time, counts as the new kid on the block. He plays charismatic Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, and has a few choice ding-dongs with Stephen Graham as the upstart who rubs him up the wrong way. The movie\u2019s palette runs from autumnal to wintry, but Pacino\u2019s colourful portrayal stands out like a knickerbocker glory at a wake.<\/p>\n 8. Donnie Brasco (1997)Pacino and Depp in Donnie Brasco. Photograph: AJ Pics\/Alamy<\/p>\n Johnny Depp is the FBI agent infiltrating a New York crime family, but the movie belongs to Pacino, who is unbearably poignant as Lefty, the lowly, down-at-heel mob lieutenant taking him under his wing. British director Mike Newell compared Pacino to Alec Guinness in his habit of building a character through costume, but ran into trouble by not giving the actor enough closeups. \u201cYou mistake my art,\u201d Pacino said after storming off set. \u201cYou don\u2019t value me.\u201d<\/p>\n 7. Heat<\/a> (1995)<\/p>\n After Righteous Kill, The Irishman and their glossy joint promos for the Moncler clothing brand, it\u2019s no longer a novelty to see Pacino and Robert De Niro together on screen. But when they shared the same frame for the first time as mirror-image cop-and-robber adversaries in Michael Mann\u2019s thriller, it was positively headline-grabbing. Their coffee-shop conflab is a little gem of unfussy intensity. Elsewhere, Pacino\u2019s more cuckoo line readings (exhibit A: \u201cCause she\u2019s got a <\/a>great ass!<\/a> And you got your head <\/a>all the way up it!<\/a>\u201d<\/a>) are informed by his character\u2019s cocaine addiction \u2013 a detail which Mann excised in the edit, leaving the actor looking inexplicably deranged.<\/p>\n 6. Carlito\u2019s Way (1993)<\/p>\n Brian De Palma executes a string of intricate set-pieces, beginning with a pool-hall ambush and climaxing with a Grand Central Station shootout; Sean Penn throws caution and vanity to the wind as a crooked lawyer with an Art Garfunkel frizz; and Pacino is full of unembarrassed romantic longing as the ex-con trying to go straight. This is him at his most sweetly sincere. As well as his most impatient: the actor grew so exasperated by a tricky shot in which he was travelling on a subway train while being filmed from a second train running on a parallel track, that he hijacked his one and headed home for the day.<\/p>\n 5. Scarecrow (1973)Two drifters \u2026 Gene Hackman and Al Pacino in Scarecrow. Photograph: Cinematic\/Alamy<\/p>\n Fresh from the first Godfather, Pacino returned to Jerry Schatzberg, who had launched his screen career in The Panic in Needle Park, for this melancholic buddy movie, ravishingly shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, about two drifters ambling across the US. Gene Hackman is the sour, volatile ex-convict who dreams of opening a carwash, Pacino the ingenuous former sailor holding a candle \u2013 well, a lamp, which he carries everywhere with him \u2013 for his young child (girl or boy, he\u2019s not sure: they\u2019ve never met). It was one of Hackman\u2019s favourites among his own movies but Pacino came around to the film\u2019s bruised charms only latterly. He wrote in his memoir Sonny Boy that a recent viewing left him \u201csurprised by how powerful it was, how strongly I felt its impact\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2018Hypnotic\u2019 \u2026 Pacino as Michael Corleone. Photograph: Cinetext Bildarchiv\/Paramount Pictures\/Allstar<\/p>\n The mesmerising prequel sections, with Robert De Niro as the ambitious young immigrant Vito Corleone, lend the picture its vitality and far outstrip the sequel component of the film, with its sluggish Havana politicking. But Pacino is still hypnotic as Michael Corleone, now calcified by power and wearing his cruelty like a cowl. An infernal heat rages in his standoffs with his thwarted wife Kay (Diane Keaton<\/a>) and weaselly, disloyal brother Fredo (John Cazale). There is an undeniable frisson, too, in seeing Pacino share the screen with one of his mentors, the Method titan Lee Strasberg, as gangster Hyman Roth, even if the film\u2019s killer grip has grown slack with time.<\/p>\n