Glengarry Glen Ross dvd movie.|
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Features • NTSC In Theaters : 02 October, 1992 |
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Glengarry Glen Ross description Like moths to a flame, great actors gravitate to the singular genius of playwright-screenwriter David Mamet, who updated his Pulitzer Prize-winning play for this all-star screen adaptation. The material is not inherently cinematic, so the movie's greatest asset is Mamet's peerless dialogue and the assembly of a once-in-a-lifetime cast led by Al Pacino, ... review details |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | "First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is, you're fired." |
| ...in which Kevin Spacey wrings more meaning out of the words "Will you go to lunch!" then one would think possible. The modern day Death of A Salesman, and after this, no-one will mourn his passing. A Chicago office of seedy real-estate salesmen hustling worthless Florida swampland to the weak-minded is the unlikely milieu for this hilarious indictment of the American Dream of "Get Rich Quick." The front office has handed down a mandate of "Always be closing," with the salesmen's jobs on the line if they don't make their quota. [The title-quote of my review is how this threat, called a "sales contest," is presented to our heroes.] The sweaty anxiety this induces in these low-rent con-men gives rise to retaliation, when one of them robs the office.
David Mamet's adaptation of his own Broadway hit (remember when there were actually good plays on Broadway, rather than endless musical adaptations of movies that sucked the first time around?)opens out the work, and adds two crucial scenes, including the infamous, brilliant, obscenity-and-abuse spraying Alec Baldwin "sales contest" monologue as a means of making the nest of vipers that populate the story more desparate, and hence more sympathetic. But there are two things that makes this film essential viewing, if you can handle dialog that is perhaps 65% unrepeatable in this forum: a dream cast, firing on all cylinders, with several actors who too often fall into schtick giving the performances of their lives, including: Kevin Spacey as the officious office manager; Alec Baldwin as the vicious emmisary from the unseen bosses, come to crack the whip; Jack Lemmon as an ageing Willy Loman former superstar salesman who's losing his grip; Alan Arkin and Ed Harris as a Mutt-and-Jeff Laurel & Hardy duo, one a schlemiel and the other a bundle of rage and comic exasperation; and best of all, Al Pacino, using his often-questionable over-the-top mannerisms of recent years to great effect, as the master hustler, Ricky Roma. The scene where he strikes up a casual conversation in a bar with ordinary Joe Jonathan Pryce and spins a web of boozy ruminations around his unsuspecting prey until it becomes a full-blown sales pitch is a 10 minute master class in acting and writing, a true tour de force. The amazing thing about Mamet's masterpiece is that every scene is of the same quality, street language singing like operatic arias which build to gratifying climax. The other reason to see Glengarry is the script-- there are more classic zingers than any movie in recent memory: Alec Baldwin: "What's my name?$%#@ you, that's my name!" Allen Arkin: "Are we speaking here, or are we just talking?" Al Pacino: "Vishnu himself could come down from the heavens..." And Jonathan Pryce's easily overlooked patsy Mr Lingk, seemingly incapable of getting out an articulate sentence in the face of Ricky Roma's sales pitch/verbal onslaught. The late great Lowell George of Little Feat fame once said his lyric-writing aspiration was "eloquent profanity." Mamet achieves this in spades here, and what a cast to put it over. Filmed theater at its best, screen acting pyrotechics to die for, and dialog so sharp it cuts like an electric knife. For cynicism and black humor, it's only match is Sweet Smell of Success. |
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