Manglehorn

Green operates in a smarter mode of storytelling, giving the audience the benefit of the doubt that they'll notice the details, and he's clearly whispered Pacino into giving a nuanced and human-sized turn.

David Gordon Green stages even fleeting tonal palate cleansers with a self-consciousness that parallels Al Pacino's acting.

Holly Hunter goes toe-to-toe nicely with the superbly understated Al Pacino loner obsessed with a long-lost love — one of his most rewarding outings in a very long time.

The style, one senses, is overcompensating for a narrative slackness that has nowhere particular to go other than anti-climax. That's not to say that Manglehorn isn't a good film - it is. It's just that Pacino's seasoned performance deserved a great film.

If Manglehorn is to be remembered at all, it shall be for the excruciating first date that its title character goes on with a chirpy bank clerk he has long been chatting up. Her name is Dawn, and she is played by Holly Hunter.

As is to be expected from Green in his pensive mode, there are lovely images in Manglehorn... But Manglehorn is also the latest entry into the tiresome Sad Man Learning to Love Again genre.

The result is a disappointing, shambling piece of melancholy with a few interesting scenes here and there that never cohere in such a way that allows the legendary actor to disappear into the character.

I enjoyed Manglehorn despite some fairly obvious issues with the script, but in my opinion Al Pacino's performance is so good in this movie that I found myself paying more attention to his character than the average story he was in. I really enjoyed Pacino's recent performance in Danny Collins but I would say his role here is better but unfortunately Danny Collins is a better overall film. There are several points brought up in this movie that are mentioned and then forgotten and the story is just so uneven and random at points that it gets close to wasting Pacino's amazing performance. I don't think this movie is for everybody but if you would like to see yet another great role from one of the best actors of the past 50 years Manglehorn could be worth a watch.

The first few minutes were promising, but there is a fall soon in,as the script reveals a self-indulgent ego-trip, and the string of anecdotes fail to coalesce into a real story. The locksmith stuff is where the story should have gone, and not the mere symbolism of it.

In a subtle and sometimes quirky character study on loneliness and regret, Al Pacino stars as a man in his later years unable to move on from the one true love that got away many years before, a man who’s spent years stewing in his own anger and resentment after leaving a wife he never loved and becoming estranged from a son he never connected with. Continuing a recent trend of leading roles in smaller and often hit & miss films, Pacino cannot be blamed for any of ‘Manglehorn’s’ shortcomings as he delivers a subdued and nuanced but emotive performance… and we feel that criticism of Mr. Pacino’s recent roles is unwarranted and fails to recognize the limited choices for a 75 year-old leading man in the modern film industry, not to mention how an actor and indeed a person fundamentally changes over time. Despite the fact that Pacino and Holly Hunter’s accomplished performances make it hard to overlook the film entirely,’ Manglehorn’ is nevertheless an uneven film with a sparse narrative plugged with poetic and stylistic filler and featuring quasi-surreal sequences that seem out of place within the story. Perhaps the biggest shortcoming with ‘Manglehorn’ however is the fact that for all its quirks, it’s still a rather traditional redemption drama within a predictable structure, and for all the angst and melancholic character journeys, the conclusion is rather familiar and sentimental, even going so far as to suggest that positivity and hope can create magic. The Bottom Line… Impressive and nuanced performances from Al Pacino and Holly Hunter can’t mask the unsubstantial story and lack of originality, despite its periodic quirkiness and admirable attempt at a study of loneliness and resentment, ‘Manglehorn’ is too underwhelming to leave a lasting memory.