Phil Spector

Mamet is very much on his game in Phil Spector, but so is every member of his cast, including Al Pacino as Spector and Helen Mirren as attorney Linda Kenny Baden: Watching these two titans of acting work is half the fun.

From Spector's verbal bluster, to all the chatter about ballistics and forensics, it's a very talkie 90 minutes, occasionally punctuated by a haunting soundtrack. But the high-caliber performers, as well as Mamet's sparkling dialogue, keep things compelling.

Even though the movie is loaded with enough to satisfy those who believe Spector did it, as Mirren’s role is written and Pacino’s performance hints at, the film seems eager to suggest Spector was found guilty mostly of being a freak. That have-it-both-ways storytelling doesn’t make Phil Spector a great legal movie, but it allows two exceptional actors and a talented writer a chance to play with reality.

Phil Spector is just about ideal as an HBO movie; watchable and gossip-worthy but just not that compelling.

Phil Spector is missing dramatic tension. It’s staged as a movie but it’s constructed more like a play, with plenty of scenes of two people exchanging Mametian dialogue in claustrophobic spaces.

As good as the performances are and as fascinating it might be to see the inner workings of a celebrity trial where money was apparently no object, Phil Spector plays like a docudrama.

It’s an insidious whitewash of a convicted killer and an infamous smear of his victim. It’s a shame on all involved.... The closest thing to fairness in Phil Spector is the blow-you-away performance by Al Pacino in the title role.