Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

I saw this in the theatre so many years ago, I believe Kevin Seeger was along. We must have been some of the few who saw it then because it didn't make much money. I have seen it 3 or 4 times since, the most recent being Sunday. One thing that strikes me is how young everyone looks. I think that reaction comes from how current the movie still feels. The only loud giveaways are the style of the cars and how none of the salesman are using computers. I have the movie on before just to watch the Alec Baldwin speech and then couldn't help myself and watched it through to the end. I'm particularly impressed with what Jack Lemmon does because in my head he is still the guy in drag next to Marylin Monroe or he's loaning his apartment to Fred MacMurray or clearing his sinuses and embarrassing Walter Mathau. He's always this young comic actor in my head, naive and good-hearted. In the film he is con man with pathos and more believable than in anything that came before. Pacino was nominated for Best Supporting actor for this and Pacino is better here than in SCENT OF A WOMAN, the movie he won Best Actor for this same year. There are shades here of Pacino's overacting but they are forgivable compared to his cartoon performance in SCENT. 20 years hence I have to feel that Lemmon deserved it more and even Baldwin could be considered more worthy for his short yet iconic appearance.

I decided to watch it again after my praise for Mamet's THE VERDICT script and I really love how within all the profane language Mamet has Alec Baldwin wish them luck at the end and calls them gents. It's like a little wink that acting and selling are the same thing. The MacGuffin mystery within the film is less interesting and the solution to it seems a contrivance, but it's easy to forgive after watching Jack Lemmon standing in a phone booth on a rainy night pretending to talk to a secretary that doesn't exist all for the sake of a sale.