People I Know (2002)
** (out of 4)
Press agent Eli Wurman (Al Pacino) is trying to get together a big benefit but other things in his life starts to cause problems. His one client, actor Cary Launer (Ryan O'Neil) asks him to get a hooker (Tea Leoni) he knows out of jail and this here leads to some dark corners of the city involving some high ranked officials. PEOPLE I KNOW pretty much got released without any fan-fair and it's easy to see why because even with an A-list cast the thing just never really comes together. I think the biggest problem with the picture is that the screenplay simply has way too many subplots and none of them are very interesting. I think the film was trying to show how much stuff this agent has going in his life but the only problem is that the majority of it isn't all that interesting. This includes his relationship to his dead brother's widow (Kim Basinger), his needing this party to be a success and of course the stuff dealing with the hooker. The story here is certainly on high speed as all sorts of things are going on but when you don't care about any of them it's hard to get too invested in the film. The only thing that keeps the film interesting are the performances with Pacino leading the way. I thought he was pretty laid back here and this really helped the performance. In this era the actor was known for the screaming and so on but that doesn't happen here and I found him to be very believable in the part. Supporting players Basinger, O'Neal, Leoni, Richard Schiff and others are also very good in their parts. The film is a thriller but there just aren't enough thrills to make it worth sitting through. It's really too bad the performances are wasted in a film where they deserved much more.
