Martin Brest's remake -- loose, they say -- of a mid-Seventies Italian comedy. But seeing Al Pacino here in the starring role won't leave you wanting to see Vittorio Gassman or anyone else. And screenwriter Bo Goldman has transplanted the action so neatly into the American scene -- Thanksgiving weekend, recent U.S. military history, Eastern prep school, Manhattan high life -- that there is no trace of surgical scars. Between the two of them, they have created an indelible screen character -- Lt. Col. Frank Slade (ret.) -- with a look and a sound, to say nothing of a personality, entirely his own. The unblinking and unseeing eyes fixed at a point directly in front of him and never turned toward his interlocutor (excepting the policeman who interrupts his daredevil test drive of a Ferreri); the savoring and slightly obscene licking of his lips; the one-note laugh ("Ha!"); the customized exclamation ("Hoo-ah!") that permits unlimited variations ("Hooooo-ahhhh," like a low wolf-whistle; "Hoo-ah," like a bronco buster saying "Eee-ha"; "HOO-ah," like a defensive tackle making contact at the line of scrimmage; etc. ); the rolling, W.C. Fieldsian cadence, with flattened East Coast vowels and a Jack Daniels-coarsened voice, so that the overall effect is of widely spaced hills of sandpaper -- all this, and much more, crammed into the part of a foul, scurrilous, bullying blind war hero who is left in the care of a financially needy prep schooler over the holiday weekend, and who plans to put a bullet into his head after one last whirl in the Big Apple. The movie surrounding him is contrived, manipulative, overlong, sentimental, and theatrical (or as the character himself sums it up in the last scene: "How's that for cornball?"), and young Chris O'Donnell is much too bland and blank a companion. But never mind that. What matters is Pacino, and he matters quite enough. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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