GELNGARRY GLEN ROSS
by Nigel Hare
Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Jonathan Pryce and Kevin Spacey with a cast list of well respected actors you wonder how much left of the budget they had to go on the other important things like the script and, therefore, how good the movie is going to be. I wonder if the financiers and the accountants decided enough fans will watch their favourite actors in a poor movie for it to make a profit. The script was written by D...avid Mamet (never heard of him - neither have I but he has won a Pulitzer prize for drama) adapted from his Tony nominated play of the same name.
This movie depicts a side of the American dream that you don't often find in movies. It's the drama of the salesmen who are very much selling something slightly intangible and some would say a con. They sell land as an investment. Maybe these salesmen go home to the picket fence surrounding their home in the burbs with the pretty wife waiting to relax their man or maybe they don't.
It's starts with the rain poring down and it pours on these salesmen in a meeting with Alec Baldwin whose attempt to motivate them bounces from 'look how rich I am' to 'your all bums and I will fire you if you do not close the deal' complete with corporate accessories such as brass balls. The thrills come from the interactions between Pacino (top salesman on a good run) and down on his luck Jack Lemmon. Incidentally the latters character Shelley 'the machine' Levene is the bases for the 'Gill' character in the Simpsons. They are two actors in tip top form and shine like the stars they are (RIP Jack). But then not of these actors give anything but top class performances and it is that plus the script that puts this film right up there as a classic. It is a movie I think I shall watch once a year and never get bored with it. Classic, classic, classic.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/?ref_=nv_sr_4
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