Perhaps it’s inevitable that actors with a career as venerated as Al Pacino’s slip into revery. The stage has his heart. His films – when they come – smartly play on the legend. Other recent releases (Wilde Salomé, Danny Collins, The Humbling) have seen the 75-year-old give creative ennui a nod and a wink. Manglehorn is a more sage assessment of a talent maturing with age.
Director David Gordon Green guides Pacino through a beautiful performance as the eponymous Austin locksmith, ruminating on an ancient break-up. He trudges mournfully through an America he no longer understands. The oddities around him – a messy pileup involving a watermelon truck, two Trap dancers spinning in slow motion – might just be happening in his head.
On the surface, Manglehorn’s a sleepy romance about an old man brushing off the rust to love again (his squeeze, played by Holly Hunter, is – of course – nearly two decades younger). Its depths hide a strange, satisfying meditation on regret, nostalgia and remorse.
