You won't be disappointed!

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I really don't understand why so many people are so turned off by this film! Granted, it is a more of a series of character and behavior study sketches, than a fully developed story, but not by much, the story that is here is compelling. The outstanding performances more than make up for any short comings in the story as a whole. I just don't see how people were so bored with the film - I found it engrossing. Perhaps people often don't know what do do with a film that tells its story more through events, human interaction and behavior, than through conventional narrative. This is more a in the mold of a small wonderfully effective film like "Dinner Rush" than the conventional Hollywood script. Or, you could even look at it like "Broadway Danny Rose with Prescription Drugs and Opium"! It works on that level as well. But it definitely is worth a look though! And the performances are stellar!

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.

Some people can do drunks and some can't. Richard Egan couldn't do drunks and neither could Doris Day. Paul Newman did splendid drunks, and Al Pacino equals him here. There's a scene in which he and Tea Leoni go to her hotel room, not so much drunk as drugged out. He staggers into the bathroom, gawks at his wrecked image in the mirror, and moans, "Jesus, these hotel lights." Pacino calls his doctor, Robert Klein, and mumbles in his thick, hoarse voice, "I got a starlet out here and we got enough pills -- we can start a (expletive deleted) cartel." The sight of him weaving back and forth in front of the urinal, trying to take a leak with one hand and dial a cell phone with the other projects a superlative image of comedy and pathos. He collapses and falls asleep in the bath tub but not before either witnessing the murder of Tia Leone or hallucinating it. In any case, the next morning he remembers none of it, thinks she's sleeping, and returns to work.If it's difficult to do a good drunk, it's fairly easy to play a man at the end of his rope. All it requires, as a minimum, is to be as earnest as possible and grimace with desperation, the Willy Loman model. But Pacino goes far beyond that as a worn-out public relations man in New York who is trying to put together a final and extremely important benefit for a decent social cause. To do it, he must talk the ambitious movie star, Ryan O'Neal, into attending. He must convince both a prominent black minister and a leader of the Jewish community. They hate each other. The black man accuses the Jew of only acting out of white guilt. The Jew objects strongly to the minister's use of the word "holocaust." On the day of the benefit, Ryan O'Neal fires Pacino as his PR man.Pacino is older and lumpier but it's not just that. He LOOKS and ACTS the part with near total credibility. Make up has turned him pale. And his long black hair has been groomed in such a way that it consists of a dozen or so independent cowlicks, resembling some mutant tropical plant, some kind of agave. Wardrobe has given him over-sized clothes so that he seems even smaller than he is. Others -- even the women -- seem to loom over him. And he slouches a good deal. He affected this posture in earlier work too, but here it's perfect for the character. And the inflections with which he informs that exhausted and worn-out voice are indescribable.The other cast members are almost at his level, might actually BE at Pacino's level if they had more prominent and colorful parts. Leoni does a good drunk too. It's surprising to see two Italian-Americans doing such a superincumbent job of being loaded since alcohol abuse isn't that common in Mediterranean ethnic groups.I don't want to run out of space but let me add that Robert Klein's role is engrossing. As Pacino's sympathetic and well-meaning doctor, he's the only guy with whom Pacino is able to share his concerns. Yet Klein shows up as part of a delegation from the Jewish community to lay down non-negotiable demands before the organization will agree to appear at Pacino's benefit. Kim Basinger, as the widowed sister-in-law whom Pacino loves, gives one of her best performances as a decent and beautiful admirer. Of course she's not as good as she was when she was my supporting player in "No Mercy," an art film that was incandescent with poetry. Ryan O'Neal, the movie star who wants to be Senator, is bronzed to the point of teak and has a great big smile full of glistening white choppers that any cartoon character out of Monty Python's animation sequences might have envied.There's a fly in this ointment and it appears at the tragic end. Teoni's murder has put Pacino's life in danger and the danger is real. But a man into whom a knife has been shoved on a public street, a man bleeding to death inside and out, wouldn't say, "Hey! That hurt, man," and then wobble home to exsanguinate on his recliner while watching Regis Philbin. Also, pardon me, but what is the point of Daniel Algrant, the director's, taking an exterior shot of the apartment in which Pacino's body sits, then slowly inverting the camera and having the shot ascend (or descend) into the open sky?

...and who knows you that count! That "who knows you" is the key. I sense from some of the comments that people just don't get it, especially when they write things about "seeing an old, tired Pacino." Since that was the role he was playing, that might give you a clue why he seemed that way. Sigh.But I haven't heard anyone comment either on the irony that while he was trying hard, literally, to mind his own business, the affairs (again literally) of others kept dragging him down and ultimately killed him. It was literally the person he knew, and was trying to defend, who (directly or indirectly) killed him or had him killed because he "knew too much", specifically the woman he was supposed to be getting rid of.I'm a big Pacino fan and will see anything he's in. Although it's nowhere as great as his other films (subdued and you sometimes see him peek out of the role), it is Pacino, and that's good enough to invest 2 hours of your life in watching anytime.