People I Know (2002)

A powerful behind-the-scenes man in politics and show business finds himself skidding into a very public scandal in this taut drama entitled,People I Know.It stars Al Pacino,Kim Basinger,Ryan O'Neal and Téa Leoni.The movie was directed by Daniel Algrant.Eli Wurman was raised in the deep South, attended Harvard Law School, and has devoted his spare time to progressive political causes since working alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960's. However, Wurman now makes his living as a press agent and PR man, and while he's near the top of his profession, years of overwork, constant smoking and drinking, and ceaseless tension are taking their toll, leaving him on the verge of collapse, with only the prescriptions of his friend Dr. Napier keeping him on his feet. One of Wurman's biggest clients is Cary Launer, a fading film star with political aspirations who, after attending a disastrous Broadway opening, asks Wurman to do him a big favor which is to bail Launer's girlfriend, Jilli out of jail and keep an eye on her. Wurman manages to get Jilli out of the stir, but she insists upon being escorted to an exclusive sex and opium den for a night of heavy drinking and drugging, and then reveals to Wurman that she owns a device which she's used to record footage of the most public figures who attend the club, including Elliott Sharansky, a billionaire Jewish civic leader. That night, a half out-of-it Eli accompanies Jilli back to her hotel room when an intruder barges in and forces an overdose on her, killing her instantly. The next morning, Wurman has only fuzzy memories of what transpired. He decides to focus on his attempts to set up a political fund raiser, but has a hard time getting the right A-list celebrities to appear, just as many of New York's power brokers aren't especially interesting in working with Wurman or Launer. In the midst of this chaos, Victoria, who was married to Wurman's late brother, arrives in New York and urges him to leave the city and his career behind while he still can.There are juicy possibilities in Jon Robin Baitz's script, and with a topnotch director and a little more better elements that they might have blossomed. As it is, despite a couple of nifty gotchas, the movie never quite gets into full stride. Tea Leoni shines as an addicted actress with a flinty vocabulary, but Kim Basinger is less lucky with her plot- device role. Pacino looks as though he's about to draw his last breath in every shot, which is precisely how he should look.With an unforgettable performance this is one of Pacino's best as you won't want to miss a minute of this gripping motion picture despite being deeply flawed thriller due to excess of plot points that fail to coalesce.

Something happens after the first hour of "People I Know" – it gets interesting.Up to that point, with Al Pacino playing lapdog to Ryan O'Neal, the startlingly beautiful Tea Leoni as an emotionally bereft television starlet, and a smattering of good actors in great roles, *People I Know* seemed to stagger the way of those listless, shiftless, self-referential High Society movies about unethical publicists, dumb actors and immoral politicians. (Yawn.) But as it happens, there is a powerful little movie lurking beneath the façade of PR puerility.Al Pacino is New York publicity agent Eli Wurman, whose phone doesn't ring as much as it used to. He panders to his Last Big Client, actor Cary Launer (O'Neal), to the extent of babysitting Launer's latest fling, Jilli (Leoni), to bundle her out of town on Launer's request. But in the course of tagging along with the flighty Jilli on one of her regular all-night industry benders, Eli gets very bent and Jilli gets very dead.Desperately attempting to pull together a publicity event (which no A-Listers want to attend, despite his puling at their heels), Eli must contend with not only the shadowy types who killed Jilli, but with the *real* scary people who inhabit the nether regions of high society – politicians and clergy.After seeing him in various dispensable B-roles, Richard Schiff comports himself very respectfully as a powerful politician, as does Bill Nunn, as a feisty clergyman.Pacino plays exhausted better than almost anyone and this movie's breakneck PR pace, coupled with Eli's staggering gait and slurred small-town delivery makes us want to get stranded on a desert island as respite from the dogged ulterior motives he encounters - and utilizes himself - in his minute-to-minute tribulations. His doctor (Robert Klein), though advising him of how close he is to total collapse, prescribes him drugs to keep him standing. Victoria (the still-luminescent Kim Basinger), widow to Eli's brother, also senses his cliff-edge demeanor and enjoins him to accept her offer of warmth and quietude on her farm. Before it's too late.And "too late" is now. Just as Eli's hard work has paid off, with blurbs in the papers, a mention on the Regis show and a promise of bedding down with Kim Basinger; just as we are threatened with a sappy ending – the movie suddenly gets New York on us, disallowing Eli even one moment to savor his comeback, as that murderous element that he encountered with Jilli and almost forgot about, comes back to ensure there are no loose ends.As Eli's phone starts ringing again, there is no one left to field the calls.

A public relations agent in New York (Al Pacino) tries to recapture his misplaced ideals by organizing an event in response to the mayor's crackdown on crime, a crackdown which results in widespread arrests and deportations. Years of drugs have diminished his effectiveness, and the drug culture is an essential part of the film's murky subplot, that has Tea Leoni as a strung out actress who Pacino bails out of jail and ends up going with to a crazy party where people are smoking opium. When she's murdered later that night in her hotel room while Pacino is reclined and nearly passed out in the bathtub, the story begins to be a rather ingenious combination of this effort to mobilize the intellectual, political, and religious elite in response to the heavy-handed mayor, while also wading through the colorful and dangerous gutter in which many of them occasionally like to plod around in. With a great part for Ryan O'Neal as an Oscar winning actor contemplating politics, and some very well cast parts and a great stand-off in the kitchen at the restaurant where the benefit takes place between a leading black minister and his bodyguards and his Jewish nemesis and his bodyguards as well, the film lashes out at the hypocrisy of all of them by focusing in on an addled and vulnerable publicity agent who's just about at the end of his rope.

This is a truly terrible film.I'm only writing this so that some people somewhere are put off watching it. If I have stopped one person from wasting some of their precious life watching this film I shall die happy.Unutterably dull, although since it stars Al Pacino I was fooled into thinking that at any moment something interesting was going to happen. Then the credits rolled, and I realised I had been completely fooled into watching this unbelievable drivel.I cannot believe that this film has achieved as high a score as it has at IMDb (over 5 stars when I last saw the voting). Are you people voting ironically?Please, please, please do not watch this film!