People I Know (2002)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Admirable film.

Absolutely Brilliant!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I really don't understand why so many people are so turned off by this film! Granted, it is a more of a series of character and behavior study sketches, than a fully developed story, but not by much, the story that is here is compelling. The outstanding performances more than make up for any short comings in the story as a whole. I just don't see how people were so bored with the film - I found it engrossing. Perhaps people often don't know what do do with a film that tells its story more through events, human interaction and behavior, than through conventional narrative. This is more a in the mold of a small wonderfully effective film like "Dinner Rush" than the conventional Hollywood script. Or, you could even look at it like "Broadway Danny Rose with Prescription Drugs and Opium"! It works on that level as well. But it definitely is worth a look though! And the performances are stellar!

With 'People I Know' Dan Algrant tells a story of how the rich and powerful can get away with anything and everything. In the film, it is an actress, Jill (Tea Leoni) and a PR (Al Pacino) who fall victim as they threaten to expose the shady potentially scandalous secrets of the rich elites. Algrant's portrayal is very one-sided because he shows all the wealthy characters as big bad wolves and the lesser fortunate people in a more humane light. Examples include the scene where Tea's face lightens up as she thinks of a house in the country, and the sequences between Pacino and Basinger where we see a vulnerable side of Eli. It is the performances that stand out. Al Pacino displays a very intense performance, of a vulnerable and relatively weak character. It is entirely different from the kind of roles he has played earlier and one of his best parts. Kim Basinger lightens the screen as the supportive and loving Vicci. I liked how Algrant demonstrates the special relationship between Eli and Vicci. Their scenes together were some of the best moments of the movie. Tea Leoni is superb despite having a small role. Ryan O'Neal and Richard Schiff are adequate. 'People I Know' is a small film and the ending perhaps may not appeal to many but I thought it was an interesting, even though somewhat partial, take on how power corrupts and destroys.

At the start, the movie seemed like a washout but as it moved to its climax, it became more and more gripping. Al Pacino is an actor par excellence. In this show, he is a man on a mission to bring all the old hack liberals together in an event to support a cause for people who would otherwise be ignored. He calls in debts from all the name celebrities and politicians he knows in New York. It is a challenge that requires him to appeal to their own self-interest.His health has taken a heavy toll over the years since his glory days in Selma. He is still trying to live up to the promise he once showed. As he says more than once: I finished fourth in my graduating class. Despite himself, he outshines them all in his integrity. Watch this movie, not for the story, but to see a first-rate actor at work.

A public relations agent in New York (Al Pacino) tries to recapture his misplaced ideals by organizing an event in response to the mayor's crackdown on crime, a crackdown which results in widespread arrests and deportations. Years of drugs have diminished his effectiveness, and the drug culture is an essential part of the film's murky subplot, that has Tea Leoni as a strung out actress who Pacino bails out of jail and ends up going with to a crazy party where people are smoking opium. When she's murdered later that night in her hotel room while Pacino is reclined and nearly passed out in the bathtub, the story begins to be a rather ingenious combination of this effort to mobilize the intellectual, political, and religious elite in response to the heavy-handed mayor, while also wading through the colorful and dangerous gutter in which many of them occasionally like to plod around in. With a great part for Ryan O'Neal as an Oscar winning actor contemplating politics, and some very well cast parts and a great stand-off in the kitchen at the restaurant where the benefit takes place between a leading black minister and his bodyguards and his Jewish nemesis and his bodyguards as well, the film lashes out at the hypocrisy of all of them by focusing in on an addled and vulnerable publicity agent who's just about at the end of his rope.