Pacino’s days of playing scene-chomping cops or criminals appear to be over, and he’s certainly embraced his age. While this career move is admirable on his part, the movies themselves just haven’t been very good.
“Manglehorn,” written and directed by David Gordon Green, is the worst of the trio. Pacino plays A.J Manglehorn, a locksmith who can’t get over the fact that Claire, the love of his life, walked out on him years ago. This has left him sullen and dazed, trapped in a self-imposed prison of regret.
It’s an intriguing enough premise for an indie short painfully stretched out to 97 minutes. The picture is a series of rambling, aimless sequences depicting Manglehorn in his stupefied, melancholy, old age. He talks to his cat Fanny; he flirts with a bank teller (Holly Hunter). He tries to reconnect with his estranged son (Chris Messina). Indie filmmaker Harmony Korine even shows up as a man who used to play on the Little League baseball team Manglehorn coached. But none of these reoccurring interactions go anywhere in the long run. The action moves at tortoise speed, not really getting started until the end.
There’s hardly any story or character development to be found in “Manglehorn.” To spice things up Green inserts poetic, slow-motion montages (usually with Pacino reading letters he’s written to Claire in voice-over) and sequences that border on the surreal. But these moments are just window dressing, giving one the illusion of depth.
It all gets to be repetitive and tedious after a while. And worst of all, the film builds to an underwhelming and frustrating “happy ending,” which feels more like it should be a jumping-off point than a conclusion.
Overall, “Manglehorn” is a whole lot of nothing. It’s a waste of Pacino’s time (who clearly hasn’t lost his love of acting), and it’s a waste of the audience’s time.