Scent of a Woman (Martin Brest, 1992)

With: Al Pacino, Chris O'Donnell, James Rebhorn, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Plot: Charlie (O'Donnell) is a prep shool student unwittingly involved in trouble to do with vandalising school property, over a weekend he takes money to baby-sit a blind, bitter retired Vietnam vet (Pacino), who whisks him off for a weekend of pleasure in New York, planning to subsequently kill himself.

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It's funny when, after watching this, you suddenly realise how manipulative and corny it is, because I was too engrossed to really notice until the end. Taken at face value the story is pretty stereotypical and trite (wherein Pacino's horrible character is a wise and noble mentor underneath the drinking and rudeness), it even fails to call out the character for any wrongdoing, though at least it doesn't trumpet him as a hero (not quite anyway). The reason these problems don't particularly matter is Pacino's exhaustive performance, inhabiting the character with a fascinating overflow of verbal tics and mannerisms. The script wisely chooses to not deal too heavily in his past (Everything we know about his life is informed by Pacino's attitude), and the parallel storyline of O'Donnell's school troubles is kept to a minimum number of scenes, helping just enough to define the character of Charlie without thinking he can carry as much of the film as its true heavyweight character can. Yes, it's a very Hollywoody 'surrogate father and son' journey but it's mostly kept admirably low key and, despite being a bit overindulgent at two and a half hours, it has enough positives to make for a truly memorable main character, sufficiently served by the story.

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