The “colossal” sci-fi movie Al Pacino unexpectedly adored: “Such ingenuity”
Whether it’s a coincidence or a subliminal thought that the genre is beneath them in some way, a unifying theme among many of cinema’s greatest-ever actors, including Al Pacino, is that they’ve gone their entire careers barely dabbling in sci-fi or steering clear of it altogether.
If you want to split hairs, you could call Richard Donner’s Superman a sci-fi flick as well as a comic book adaptation, which accounts for Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman. The former also starred in The Island of Dr Moreau and the latter in Marooned, but the less said about those two, the better.
Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is pretty much the sum of Robert De Niro’s contributions, Jack Nicholson hamming it up in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! was his only dalliance with the medium, Daniel Day-Lewis has never been in one, and one of the worst films Paul Newman ever made, Robert Altman’s Quintet, was his sole brush with sci-fi.
It’s a fascinating wrinkle that shows how it isn’t very high up the priorities list for many certified silver-screen legends, and Pacino is in the same boat. Of course, he famously turned down the role of Han Solo in George Lucas’ Star Wars, with Andrew Niccol’s turgid S1M0NE the only time he dipped his toes into those waters.
That doesn’t mean he’s not a fan, though, but if you want to split those very same hairs mentioned earlier, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy is as much of a superhero story as it is an intergalactic adventure. It’s hard to imagine someone like Pacino sitting there and getting a kick out of watching aliens running around onscreen, but even he’s been known to make the odd exception.
“To me, Men in Black was very impressive,” he revealed. “While it isn’t the kind of thing I do, sitting there watching it, I couldn’t help but be impressed. Such ingenuity. The film technique is colossal, and that seems to be the direction films are going in.”
Like he said, it’s not the kind of thing he does, but that doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate a classic. It’s not hyperbolic to call Barry Sonnenfeld’s odd-couple caper one of the most purely entertaining, rousingly enjoyable, and effortlessly exciting big-budget releases of the 1990s, with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones’ chemistry elevating it from good to great.
The fact that the rest of the franchise resolutely failed to stuff the lightning back into the bottle and recapture the magic of the original underlined just how impressive it was as a work of popcorn cinema, and almost 30 years later, it still holds up as a breezy, 98-minute slice of wall-to-wall fun.
As a genre and a concept, Men in Black definitely isn’t Pacino’s bag, but he knows a good movie when he sees one, and he was suitably enthralled by the black-suited agents saving the world from the scum of the universe.
