Manglehorn (2014)

I saw this film at the South By Southwest Film Festival and it has stayed with me since then and now I'm now looking forward to its release. I am a gigantic Al Pacino fan and was excited to see him in this movie because it appeared that for the first time in a long time he was invested in the character and the film. The fact that the director Green and the screenwriter Logan created this role specifically for him probably helped. The story is quite simple. Manglehorn is a lonely and bitter locksmith who once loved a woman who left him. He has lived his remaining years regretting this situation and it has turned him into a shell of his former self. How do we know what his former self was? Because some of the characters talk about who he was and apparently it was a man who almost had God like abilities. The movie is an imitate look at what this man's life is like today. He loves his granddaughter, he hates his son, he accepts the praise of a former little league player, and he's conflicted about letting go of his lost love in acceptance of a new one. That's what the movie is and it's strange and moving. But I also couldn't help thinking that there might be something underneath all this considering it was written specifically for Al Pacino. As I thought about it I took more away from it. Manglehorn is Al Pacino. The people who talk about who he used to be is us who love the roles he used to take on. He used to be miraculous/ he used to be an amazing actor. His lost love might be his lost passion for acting. And the movie is about his journey to find that passion again while his demons, drinking, ego, and anger, keep him from being the talented man he used to be. This was my interpretation of the movie and seeing how there are quite a few references to Pacino's previous work I wonder if I'm wrong. But even ignoring that you can enjoy this movie for nothing more than a great platform to see a new and exciting Al Pacino performance.

Fmovies: Review: What an awful movie! It's really boring from the beginning to the end and I found Al Pacino's character quite depressing. I didn't really get the point of the storyline because it didn't go anywhere and the ending didn't make any sense to me. Anyway, Al Pacino plays Manglehorn whose a mobile locksmith with a cat as his only companion. He constantly writes letters to the love of his life, who left him years ago and he has a rocky relationship with his son who turns to him for money after he comes under investigation for tampering with investments. Manglehorn gets a hefty bill for an operation that was performed on his cat who ate one of his keys, so he's unable to help his son which doesn't help there distant relationship. The only joy in Manglehorn life is a woman at the bank called Dawn (Holly Hunter), who he eventually plucks up the courage to ask her out. She soon falls for his dry humour but he still has his ex on his mind and it puts a strain on there relationship. All of the letters that he sent to his ex are returned to his address and he eventually gets fed up with trying to rekindle a relationship with her. After burning all of the letters, he tries to get back with Dawn but she is really upset with the way that he treated her. That's about it! No major twists or anything exciting! There are some unexplained scenes like the bees in the mailbox, the random car crash and the miming character, so the sketchy script really didn't help matters. Pacino's average acting seemed very one toned and his character was more of an miserable old git than a interesting, happy go lucky fellow. I basically couldn't stand the movie and I got fed up with watching Manglehorn going through life without a hope of happiness or joy. My hopes of Pacino getting back to top form are really running thin and he seems to be picking awful roles that are not doing his career any good. Boring and quite depressing!

Round-Up: What has happened to Pacino's career? Whenever I used to ask people who they favourite actors were, they would always say Pacino and DeNiro but they both haven't made a decent film for ages. At 75 years old, Alfredo James Pacino has had a roller-coaster career but he has always been highly respected in Hollywood and movie goers around the world. After the appalling FrapaCino rap in Jack & Jill with Adam Sandler, his career has gone completely downhill but he has some impressive movies coming up, which include the Irishman starring Robert DeNiro and directed by Martin Scorsese, Marco Polo with the Rock, Beyond Deceit with Anthony Hopkins and the Trap with Robert Pattinson, James Franco and Benicio Del Toro. Hopefully, these movies will bring him back into the spotlight and earn him the respect that he has been missing for some time. Anyway, this movie was directed by David Gordon Green who also brought you movies like All the Real Girls, Underflow, Snow Angels, Pineapple Express, Your Highness, the Sitter, Prince Avalanche and Joe starring Nicolas Cage. For someone that has covered a wide range of genres, he really did make a mess of this movie and he didn't take advantage of the great cast. With 6 movies in the pipeline including the Innocent Man with George Clooney and Stronger with Jake Gyllenhaal, he should put this terrible movie behind him and put it down as a bad day at the office.

Budget: $4million Worldwide Gross: $132,000 (Terrible)

I recommend this movie to people who are into their dramatic movies starring Al Pacino, Holly Hunter and C

A character piece about the life of one grumpy old, senile man. His issues are laid-out in grandiose & overly sentimental melodramatics. We as an audience are slowly dragged from sad set piece to sad set piece where the conclusions are obvious if only the film would spare us the "drama" and arrive at them already.

Manglehorn is an Indie that knows its an Indie and is closer to "Prince Avalanche" than any of the Directors other works. Al Pacino kills it here but instead of focusing on the solid dramatic acting, Green decided to over-direct this right into "trying to hard to be pretentious" territory.

Manglehorn is trying to re-connect with a long lost love while slowly driving away the things he does have in his life. He's struggling to be happy. Where in that the Director feels the need to have "LSD flashback" type sequences is lost on me.

It's not original nor refreshing to slowly plod an audience around in drab and everyday circumstances, throw some folk music or a harp in the background and call it "subdued" and "special". I don't need Jurassic Park Dinosaurs or anything but I don't need to see him feed his cat 37 times to realize he loves it. I don't need to see him get his mail 32 times before you get to the point of why. I just need Pacino, with something to chew on. I just need his character to fight these demons already. I just need his struggles, his journey and his resolution.

Instead you meandered for 90% of the film and slapped it together at the end with some attempt at an thoughtful ending that landed with about as much intrigue as a happy meal toy. What a wasted Pacino performance. 3/10

Manglehorn fmovies. "You look great. Like a racehorse." A. J. Manglehorn (Al Pacino)

The above quote is a mixed compliment given to a lovely lady, Dawn (Holly Hunter), on a disastrous date. Manglehorn, a aging locksmith, can't seem to connect with his son, his ex love, really everyone but his cat, who has ingested one of his keys. Manglehorn as film is a drama about the challenges of an old man who just hasn't gotten it right.

The years he has mourned over the loss of his great love, Clara, because he foolishly let her go, seem countless. Each day he writes a letter to her, each day one returns unopened. His life has been reduced to a mess of regrets, a prison if you will from which he does not have the key. Opening others' locked doors is magic, not so with his own life.

Although Manglehorn is the solitary center of the film, those around him are prey to his bitter loneliness. Most lamentable is the way he dismisses the lovely bank clerk, Dawn, with rambling recollections of his lost love—not cool on the first date and not Seinfeldian funny. Just pathetic.

The performances make this small film worth seeing; it's as if the actors rose to Pacino's occasion, knowing the only way to emerge from this film is through good acting with one of film's greatest actors.

Director Joe Gordon Green has a flawless eye for the little details that tell much. In the case of the film's symbols such as the boat and the beehive, maybe too heavy. Yet as a literature lover, I appreciate the many obvious metaphors as a satisfactory attempt by first-time screenwriter Paul Logan to give gravity to an oft-told tale of an aging, lonely man.

For the audience, the film is a complex reminder of the need to approach old age with a light heart and an open one.

Film critic Mike D'Angelo mentions that Manglehorn is perhaps David Gordon Green's least distinctive film, and from the moment I read that, I had to agree with it. Manglehorn lacks the elements of grittiness and naturalism that Green's previous features housed, most likely because this particular effort wasn't written by him. Most of Green's trademarks - standout cinematography by Tim Orr, elements of impressionism, and exploration of a societal underbelly - are either absent or significantly muted. Manglehorn takes on a more episodic structure than the distinctly natural personality Green often conveys, and between a wide variety of intimate short films, a debut film like George Washington, deviations like The Sitter and Your Highness, and recent projects like Joe and this one, Green has proved he can defy everything from conventions to expectations.

Our titular subject is played by Al Pacino, a veteran actor who, in just his most recent performances in this film and Danny Collins, has given way to a tender, more contemplative side to his decades of character acting. He's A.J. Manglehorn here, a professional key-maker who goes about his day locksmithing everything from cars to storefront doors. One look at Manglehorn from an uninformed outsider and they see a man who confidently goes about his day, his job, and his doings, not thinking twice about anything and ostensibly trying to get his job done as efficiently as possible. Yet, Manglehorn is hurting immensely, as we can tell from sporadic voiceovers throughout the film.

Manglehorn fondly recalls the woman he loved and lost; his and her circumstances are left mostly unclear. He speaks so fondly of her that we get the feeling that when she left, everything around him crumbled. He built his life, his personality, his mood, and his feelings around a woman that he effectively made himself miserable to make sure she was happy. Now that she's gone, all Manglehorn can do is proceed forward on autopilot, incessantly caring for his cat and trying not to be fazed by every day activities. His son Jacob (Chris Messina) and him have a frigid relationship, his old friend Gary (Harmony Korine in a role that fits him like a glove) keeps popping up at the most inconvenient times to say the most insensitive thing, and the female bank teller (Holly Hunter), who flirts with him on a consistent basis, doesn't even bring him to a smile.

I identify so much with Manglehorn it's almost frightening; the days where you seem to be on autopilot, the perfunctory interactions that feel like monumental events in your own mind, and the persistent feeling of emptiness and hunger for someone you cannot have are all things that have burdened me this year. The strongest emotional empathy one can have with Manglehorn will come if one has specifically tried to cope with loneliness, the deprivation of someone that makes them happy, and the inability to solely live with one's self.

However, as a film, Manglehorn really shows what Pacino is capable of in his current state. At seventy-five, Pacino wears his straight-forward mug and his slicked back, gray hair with a sense of confidence, expressing contemplation and the weariness of life experience in every facial expression. This is a seasoned actor at work here and, much like in Danny Collins, Pacino's character is likable here because we immediately grasp the sense of what his character wants.

Writer Paul Logan captures Manglehorn's story in an episodic fashion, one that gives each

Eccentric Indie Director Green along with two Superb Actors, Al Pacino and Holly Hunter, deliver an almost Lost Art, the Character Study. Left to Low-Budget experimenters and Performers looking for an outlet Out of the Mainstream, this type of Film is becoming "Film Festival Fodder" and that is where the Genre finds the most Sympathetic Audience.

Not Multiplex favorites and Mainstream Appeal is Lacking, it is this type that Rely on Reality and have been called "Slice of Life". The Film is filled with Offbeat Imagery and Dialog that seems Flat at First but Resonates nonetheless. Witness Manglehorn's Story about a Nun and some Children on a boat to explain His Atheism.

Holly Hunter is simply Stellar in what amounts to a Supporting Role and Her Emotion is Heartbreaking and very Real. Two other People in Manglehorn's Life are included as Representative of why Pacino says in a half-hearted Throwaway Throwback Touchtone..."The World is Yours" (meaning I want nothing to do with it)...is His Son and a former Kid He coached in Little League.

Both are Obnoxious and Manglehorn finds Them Barely Tolerable and Symbolic of People in General. That may be why when Holly Hunter says on Their First Date..."I'm a people person...I love life", Pacino Snaps and regresses to a Senior Moment of Disconnect.

Overall, a Film for Refined Taste and Fans of Reality based Cinema with an Artistic Flare. Pacino and Hunter give Noteworthy Performances and the Movie is Rich with flavor.