How many movies have Robert De Niro and Al Pacino starred in together?
In 1974, New Hollywood found itself blessed with two young acting talents unlike any others before them. Just three years apart in age and both New Yorkers of Italian-American descent, there was little to split Al Pacino and Robert De Niro when The Godfather Part II was released in cinemas.
The film surpassed even its extraordinary forerunner in terms of critical acclaim, not least thanks to De Niro’s sublime turn as a young Vito Corleone. As if knowing what he was up against, Pacino upped his game as the late Vito’s son Michael in the other of the movie’s parallel narratives. He completed the transformation which had begun in the first Godfather movie by turning the second Don Corleone from a family man to a fearful tyrant.
Over the next decade, Pacino and De Niro became great friends as they vied for the position of top dog among the film industry’s most esteemed performers. A succession of performances, from Dog Day Afternoon to Scarface and from Taxi Driver to Raging Bull, cemented their statuses as screen legends just as they entered their forties.
And yet, they didn’t cross paths on screen throughout this period. In fact, they hadn’t appeared together on screen at all, since their respective roles in The Godfather Part II were each contained within a separative narrative. That’s why Michael Mann’s 1995 crime film Heat sparked a frenzy of audience and media interest when it was announced that Pacino and De Niro, both well into their fifties by then, would finally appear in the same scene. For just seven minutes of screen time, the two acting greats were face to face in a conversation no one could take their eyes off.
More recently, director Martin Scorsese brought the two together again at De Niro’s suggestion, alongside Joe Pesci, for the epic mafia drama The Irishman. De Niro got his own back on Pacino, playing the man who fatally shoots his character in a role reversal of the climactic scene in Heat.
And those are their only collaborations?
Pacino as corrupt union boss Jimmy Hoffa and De Niro as his eventual assassin Frank Sheeran won enormous plaudits upon The Irishman’s release in 2019. It completed a set of three stunning collaborations between the two actors in movies that will go down in cinema history as all-time greats. But these aren’t the only times Pacino and De Niro have appeared opposite each other on the big screen.
There’s one more collaboration between the pair which is often forgotten about because it’s painful to remember. The 2008 film Righteous Kill served up a script that even they couldn’t turn into something watchable, not least due to its motif of a killer who writes a poem for each victim he kills. Or during a borderline-laughable scene in which De Niro’s character ‘Rooster’ insists that Pacino’s ‘Turk’ has to let him die.
While three out of four ain’t bad, De Niro himself openly regrets starring in Righteous Kill. And that’s saying something from the man who took the title role in Bad Grandpa. Still, it goes to show the high value he places on his collaborations with Pacino, which he’s otherwise reserved for films worthy of some of their finest work.
The two masters of their craft have shared the same cinema screen just four times. It remains to be seen whether there’ll be a fifth. Either way, we should cherish every minute of screen time they’ve given us together in the meantime, one late-career mistake aside.
