Shallow Al

Pacino vehicle is a boring, violent display of misogyny | Sam Thielman

Someone wants to kill Al Pacino. Or it could be several people. Or it could be legions of angry moviegoers who are $10 poorer and 10 IQ points dumber after watching his phoned-in performance in Jon Avnet's woman-hating, boring new crime movie.

Like the Tommy Lee Jones-chase-the-fugitive movie, the Al Pacino-crazy-mentor movie has become a mini-genre. There's The Devil's Advocate, The Recruit, Two for the Money, Scent of a Woman, and now 88 Minutes. These films vary from year to year: Sometimes the young buck questioning Pacino's grizzled authority is blond; sometimes he's brunette. Once, he was that guy from The Matrix. Now, Pacino's junior partner is a woman, the lovely Alicia Witt, one of many grade A actors in this film (along with Leelee Sobieski, Neal McDonough, and William Forsyth) who should know better.