The only black mark on Al Pacino’s career: ‘Gigli’
Very few actors can claim to have a filmography that can rival the illustrious oeuvre of Al Pacino, stacked with one iconic masterpiece after another. His ability to enhance almost every single picture lucky enough to have him signed on as an actor has made him an invaluable part of Hollywood history.
Ranging from Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal crime drama The Godfather to Brian De Palma’s Scarface, Pacino has starred in some of the most definitive American films of the 20th century. Along the way, he has collaborated with truly talented auteurs, including Martin Scorsese, with whom he recently worked on The Irishman.
While Pacino’s contributions to American cinema cannot be doubted, it’s also true that his body of work contains a number of duds that cannot even begin to compare to his greatest movies. One of the best examples of this is his inexplicably bizarre appearance in Adam Sandler’s 2011 comedy Jack and Jill, where he played himself in a hilariously bad commercial for Dunkin’ Donuts while promoting a new drink named after him: the “Dunkaccino”.
Now, every actor has to pay the bills, and as fame grows, so does the number at the bottom of those bills. So, it’s hard to hold it against the thespians when they turn their back on great work in pursuit of great paycheques. After all, Robert De Niro doesn’t find himself working on Rocky & Bullwinkle because he thinks the source material is rich with human experience. He does it so he can buy a new house or pay for an old one.
With that in mind, Jack and Jill seems like a far more interesting project when we consider the impact of another movie he starred in: Martin Brest’s 2003 romantic comedy Gigli. Starring alongside Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, whose relationship drew a lot of attention from the media at the time, Pacino played the role of a mob boss named Starkman in this lacklustre crime film that immediately entered the “worst movie ever made” lists maintained by critics and cinephiles.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Affleck claimed that everyone knew it was going to be a flop: “[Gigli] didn’t work, and we did five weeks of reshoots, which we knew were not gonna work. It was a movie that didn’t work … Interestingly, I learned more about directing on that movie than anything else because Marty [Brest] is a brilliant director, really gifted. It’s not like it’s worse than all … there’s a bunch of horrible movies, and in terms of losing money, I’ve had five movies — at least! — that have lost more money than Gigli has.”
The actor added, “It’s just that it became a story in and of itself. The funny name, the Jennifer Lopez romance and the overexposure of that, it was kind of a perfect storm. And I remember talking to Marty the Friday it came out, and I was like, it’s just spectacular, it’s a tsunami, it couldn’t be worse. This is as bad as it gets.” However, he also credited Gigli with inspiring him to become a director so that he could make better movies.
In retrospect, Gigli obviously comes across as a terrible career decision for everyone involved, but Pacino must have been enthusiastic about reuniting with Brest. After all, it was his role in Brest’s 1992 drama Scent of a Woman that earned him the highly coveted Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’, beating out other tremendous performances like Denzel Washington’s electrifying portrayal of the titular figure in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X.
So, while looking back at the long and impressive career of Pacino, you might find yourself circling a few missteps, those movies that make you wince when defining Pacino as the world’s greatest living actor, for the most part, those movies actually tried to say something. They had artistic merit as they stood solidly against their existence. For Gigli, it wasn;t just that the critical world hated it and tha audeinces didnt go to see it, but that every member of the cast was equally embarassed by it. For that reason alone, it should be regarded as the major blackmark on Pacino’s near-sparkling career.
Watch the trailer below.
