Glengarry Glen Ross | Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon

Glengarry Glen Ross | Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon | Excellent

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Glengarry Glen Ross

	Glengarry Glen Ross Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon Lions Gate, 2002 average customer review:based on 276 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

How much you make?

Playwright David Mamet certainly has something to say about the art of selling with "Glengarry Glen Ross," and the overall statement isn't good. I don't have a clue as to what his background was before he struck it big in the entertainment biz, but I suspect Mamet either worked in sales himself or had a family member who went through a similar experience. How else could he capture perfectly the seedy underbelly of boiler room scam artists? Because "Glengarry Glen Ross" is first and foremost a story about real estate scam artists trying to con a buck out of the average Joe. I think many viewers forget this point. It's disheartening to see so many people take the lessons of this film and apply them to all sales jobs. For example, my father worked as a salesman for his entire career and never experienced anything remotely resembling the horrors seen in the film. On the other hand, everyone has dealt at one time or another with a salesman who just cannot accept "no" for an answer. So in some respects, "Glengarry Glen Ross" rings true even as it exaggerates for dramatic impact. Regardless, the film version of Mamet's play is a fascinating experience.

Spirits are low in a branch office of Mitch & Murray, a shady real estate concern that sells properties of dubious value to anyone with a few grand in a savings account. The office is a cauldron of seething resentments as the salesman grind away day after day to seal that elusive deal that will translate into one more day on the job. You've got Shelley "The Machine" Levene (Jack Lemmon), an old timer who once ruled the roost but has since fallen into a dry spell that leaves him wondering about his job on a minute by minute basis. Ricky Roma (Al Pacino) has superseded Shelley as the new lion, a young, spiffy, silver-tongued con artist with the ability to rack up sale after sale. Dave Moss (Ed Harris) and George Aaronow (Alan Arkin), both peripheral figures in the larger scheme of the office, have their own problems. Aaronow too has hit a dry spell, and Moss spends so much time complaining about the lousy job that he barely has time to go out and sell. Presiding over this insane asylum is office manager John Williamson (Kevin Spacey), a smarmy, by the book type despised by the others because he has never sold a darn thing in his life.

Then Blake (Alec Baldwin) struts into the branch office, and what was once a pressure cooker of a job shifts into a primal struggle for survival. Swaggering, brash, insulting Blake announces a new contest for these poor wretches. They will, announces Blake, clear out all of their old "leads" (cards filled in by potential customers and mailed to the company) before receiving a shot at the fresh, exciting Glengarry leads. The salesman who closes the most deals wins a new Cadillac. Second place is a box of steak knives. Everyone else gets a pink slip. Even worse, Blake threatens, he swears, he impugns the salesmen's manhood; he does everything he can possibly think of to motivate these guys to hit the street and sell. After all, he made nearly a million dollars closing these leads, so anyone who falls below his stellar record is dirt on his shoes. With their very jobs hanging in the balance, the office rapidly disintegrates into chaos and pure panic. Only Roma racks up a sell, to the odd James Lingk (Jonathan Pryce), but even that potentially falls apart in the end. Levene nearly has a nervous breakdown trying to save his skin, a breakdown fueled by the thought of his daughter's desperately needed operation. Some of the salesmen try to bribe Williamson into giving them the Glengarry leads; others plot to steal them out of Williamson's office. You won't figure out how this film ends in a million years.

I'm finding it difficult to write about this movie largely because the film lives and breathes through its characters. "Glengarry Glen Ross" is all about dialogue slathered with a generous helping of profanity and rage fueled rants. It's what goes on behind the dialogue that makes the movie a winner. Mamet sets up this Catch-22 situation (the salesman can't get the good leads until they sell the bad leads, but it's impossible to sell the bad leads) in order to examine the damaging aspects of the "sell, sell, sell," all or nothing mentality on the human psyche. The despair etched in the faces of these men, who will probably never find another job if they lose this one, speaks louder than the set pieces or even most of the mundane dialogue. Sure, a lot of these rants are hilarious in and of themselves, but there's a raging desperation behind them that puts a damper on the giggles. Isn't there something fundamentally wrong about a business strategy that drives men to consider stealing in order to protect not only their jobs but also their sense of self? You bet there is, and that is the point Mamet drives home in "Glengarry Glen Ross."

You get a bunch of extras on these two discs. An audio commentary, a short "Always Be Closing" documentary on selling, a tribute to Jack Lemmon, clips from "The Charlie Rose Show" and "Inside the Actor's Studio," and a bunch of other goodies should keep you watching long after the movie ends. What I discovered most from watching these extras had little to do with the movie, surprisingly, but the realization that Peter Gallagher is one of the most annoying people on the planet (watch the Lemmon tribute to see why). No review will do this monument to modern American business justice-just watch the movie and experience it for yourself.

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Excellent

Good portrayal of a greedy business world gone mad. The characters are chilling in their greed and the selfishness.

One of the Great Films of the 1990's

Anybody looking for a break from CGI and what passes for cinematic entertainment these days should check this one out. Anybody who appreciates great ensemble writing and crisp dialogue will love "Glengarry Glen Ross". It is quite an achievement for a film that manages to engender sympathy for land parcel salesmen. Director James Foley has gathered a great ensemble cast here and there is not a bad performance in the bunch. Special citation has to go Alec Baldwin in his one scene as the motivational speaker that Mitch and Murray sent to the office to rally the troops. If Oscars are given out for one scene then Baldwin should have received one. Two lines that Baldwin delivers say it all; "Coffee is for closers" and "Hit the bricks". Jack Lemmon as Shelley gives, what I feel, is the best performance of his career. The desperation of his character is visceral. Whether he is frantically making phone calls to dead-end leads or knocking on the door in the rain on a potential sale that goes nowhere you can deeply feel the pathos of his character. On a real trivial note, for those who haven't seen this film, Lemmon's character was the inspiration for the Gil character on "The Simpsons". Not to diminish the work done by the remainder of the cast (Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce) but I could go on infinatum as to how good this cast is. This film almost makes you pause when you receive an unsolicited phone call from a salesman. Let me emphasize, almost.

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a movie of Mamet proportions!!!!

Al Pacino (People I Know, Looking For Richard), Jack Lemmon (The Odd Couple, Out To Sea), Ed Harris (The Human Stain, Just Cause), Alec Baldwin (The Aviator, The Cooler), Alan Arkin (Grosse Pointe Blank, The Jerky Boys Movie), Kevin Spacey (Se7en, Beyond The Sea) and Jonathan Pryce (Pirates Of The Caribbean, Ronin) act their asses off in tense and powerful performances. Pacino, Lemmon, Harris, Arkin and Spacey all work as salesmen and they have to sell leads to get big mucho money by the next day or their fired...that's what the dynamic Baldwin says to them...he has everything and they dont...he doesnt like losers. So, the gang embark on selling the leads that they have and if the others dont, most of them get canned in the end. Harris and Arkin devise a plan or stealing the good leads for themselves...share them. The next day, they all come to work and find out that the place has been robbed...the contracts and leads and even the phones are all gone. A detective questions them all as the tension builds up as the actors bicker and banter on one another. Who stole the leads? A superb array of characters with the actors channeling their brilliant talents to them....Pacino is pulsating as the offfice hotshot...Lemmon hits the mark as the office loser....Arkin and Harris deliver as well and Spacey is riveting as the boss. Jonathan Pryce has a nice role as one of Pacino's clients. The dialouge rolls off the screen like firecrackers in true David Mamet style. A masterpiece. I recommend it highly. Directed by James Foley (The Corrupter, Fear)

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Excellent film version of scalding Mamet play

David Mamet's GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS is, in many ways, a DEATH OF A SALESMAN for today. Like Miller's classic theater drama, it shows the American Dream gone wrong as it follows (real-estate) salespeople and their desperate attempt to make an honest buck. It is a marvelous play, and frankly better than DEATH OF A SALESMAN. Certainly, it is nowhere near as sentimental or preachy as SALESMAN occasionally was. Mamet achieves a kind of "poetry of the commonplace" with his fresh, witty, and sometimes painfully reverberant dialogue. The dialogue, as well as the compelling characterizations, ensure that GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS rises above its 1980s origins and becomes something more timeless and universal: a devastating portrait of desperation and broken dreams, set in a self-contained universe in which the name of the game is, really, just to make enough money to get by...even if it means lying, cheating, and even stealing.

James Foley's film version is a successful screen adaptation because Foley trusts Mamet's great dialogue to speak for itself. Thus, Foley admirably does not attempt visual glitz to try to "cinematize" the material; he just lets the actors deliver their lines, and he and his editor Howard E. Smith do a smooth job of retaining the rhythms of the dialogue. The result may still feel a little stagebound, but Mamet's characters and themes by themselves rise above the film's occasional staginess.

And what a cast! I can't really see a dud performance in any of the major roles here. For me, the standout here is the late Jack Lemmon, who excels in what is probably the most important character of the movie. Indeed, it is Shelley "the Machine" Levene who is probably the most potent representation of the shattered dreams that is at the heart of Mamet's play: once a real-estate big shot, he is now a desperate, blubbering mess who is now simply trying to make ends meet in his life. It is that sad desperation that Lemmon captures so vividly and movingly in his performance, and it is truly heartbreaking what eventually happens to the character in the course of the film. The rest of the performers are no less accomplished. Alec Baldwin turns his brief cameo role---written expressly for the movie by Mamet---into a brief but intense tour-de-force (one that perhaps anticipates his later performance in 2003's THE COOLER). Kevin Spacey's John Williamson starts out the movie as a model of rigidity, but then, at the very end, he acquires a subtle dimension that suggests something more cruel and evil at the heart of this otherwise-unexceptional man; Spacey does an equally subtle, terrific job of conveying both sides of this fascinating character. And perhaps one should give James Foley extra points for getting Al Pacino to restrain himself as Ricky Roma, the newest hot shot in the film's real-estate firm. I recently saw Pacino in ANGELS IN AMERICA---at least, Part I of the HBO miniseries, anyway---and found his portrayal of Roy Cohn to be an extremely mannered, inappropriately scenery-chewing performance that threw me out of the movie whenever he appeared. That bizarre delivery of his---in which strange words are elongated, while others are shortened---is thankfully nowhere in evidence in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, and Pacino brings an additional energy and cockiness to the role that suits his character perfectly. Frankly, I just found it a relief to see a Pacino performance that recalled his great acting triumphs during the 1970s instead of the kind of hamminess that won him the Oscar in 1993.

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS is a powerful film about the American Dream gone sour. Highly recommended.

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