Best of al pacino movies | The cinematic genius best movies with al pacino

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Best of al Pacino movies | The cinematic genius best movies with al Pacino

I don’t know where to start, everything has been said about Al Pacino before, and I don’t think I have anything different, the name Al Pacino alone is enough for any movie lover or even any ordinary viewer to draw his attention to reading the article.

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Al Pacino has been described as the greatest actor in history, even in mediocre or poorly rated films, no one can underestimate the strength and uniqueness of his performance. So here we decided to present some of his best films, some of which you have seen or at least heard of, and some of them are not as famous, but I hope you guarantee that they will not disappoint you, and you will see for yourself what they considered one of his best films.

1- The Panic in Needle Park (1971)

  • Director: Jerry Schatzberg
  • Author: Joan Didion and John Gregory Donne, adapted from the novel by James Mills.
  • Heroes: Al Pacino, Kitty Wayne.
  • Rated on: IMDB 7.1
  • Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 86%
  • Producing Company: Gad Productions, Didion Dunn.
  • Budget: $6 million.

The Panic in Needle Park is about a group of heroin addicts who spend their time in Needle Park – the nickname for the area in Manhattan’s Upper West Side where addicts congregate – in New York City. Al Pacino plays Bobby, a heroin addict and young con artist who meets Helen, a homeless and lonely girl who finds in her relationship with Bobby the stability she craves, and they fall in love.

Bobby also introduces Helen to heroin, and eventually, she becomes addicted, too. As Bobby and Helen become increasingly dependent on each other and drugs, their need for money to fuel their habits increases, and life declines for both as their addiction deepens, leading to a chain of crime, despair, and betrayal.


2- THE GODFATHER (1972)

  • Director: Francis Ford Coppola
  • Author: Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo.
  • Heroes: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall.
  • Rated on: IMDB 9.2
  • Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 97%
  • Producing Company: Paramount Pictures and Alfran Productions.
  • Budget: $7 million

The Godfather is considered one of the greatest films of all time, based on Mario Puzo’s novel of the same name, and focuses on the powerful Italian-American crime family led by Don Vito Corleone, and his son Michael’s reluctance to join the mafia after he delves deeper into the family business. He gets involved in episodes of betrayal and violence.

The film begins with Don Vito Corleone overseeing his daughter’s wedding to his wife Carmela, which coincides with the return home of his youngest son Michael from war. Michael respects his father but refuses to be involved in his business. As for the father, he treats his family as he treats his gang members. He is kind and loving to those who respect him, but he is cruel and severe to those who do not respect him, or they may cause harm to the interest of the family or work.

So when a powerful rival and traitor wants to sell drugs in New York and needs the influence of the Don to cement his position, Vito Corleone refuses. This results in a clash between the old, fading Don values, and the new ways Michael does the thing he’s been reluctant to do, thus waging a mob war against all the other mafia families, which could tear the Corleone family apart.


3- Serpico (1973)

  • Director: Sidney Lumet.
  • Written by: Waldo Salt, Norman Wexler, and Peter Maas.
  • Stars: Al Pacino, John Randolph, Jack Kehoe, Barbara Ida Young.
  • Rated on: IMDB7.7
  • Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 90%
  • Producing Company: Artists Entertainment Complex.
  • Budget: $3 million

Serpico tells the story of an honest police officer who attempts to expose corruption within the New York City Police Department. After graduating from the New York City Police Academy, Frank Serpico becomes a uniformed officer and begins to excel at his job with great integrity, while despising the brutal treatment of his fellow officers.

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After moving to Greenwich Village, Serpico embraced the counterculture of the 1960s and became an undercover officer. While on the job, he witnesses widespread corruption within his district, with many of his colleagues accepting bribes, but Serpico refuses to engage in corruption, leaving him open to ridicule from fellow officers. When trying to inform his superiors of the corruption he witnessed, he encounters many obstacles and affect his mental health, but he does not give up and decides to take another path to expose corruption, which will turn his life upside down, and endanger him.


4- Scarecrow (1973)

  • Director: Jerry Schatzberg
  • Written by: Gary Michael White
  • Heroes: Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Dorothy Tristan.
  • Rated on: IMDB7.3
  • Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 77%
  • Producing Company: Warner Bros.

Scarecrow is about two reclusive strangers, Francis “The Lion”, an impressionable sailor, returning from sea after spending five years working on a ship, with a childlike smile. Then Max, a superficial character, just spent six years in San Quentin prison. Both are unstable and dreamy people: Max wants to set up a car wash shop, and the lion holds a lamp in a gift box for a child he’s never met – presumably his son or daughter.

Max and the Lion meet each other in California early on in their travels, and although their first meeting was somewhat confrontational due to their different natures, they decided to travel together, collaborate to open this car wash workshop, and due to the long time they stayed together on their journey, They begin to get closer to each other.

Despite their strange encounters and even their strange characters that may seem unacceptable at first, this film is a story rooted directly in the reality of the back roads and small towns of the USA. And no matter how chaotic their story may seem, the more you go through the film, the more you see the backstory of each character, and you begin to relate to them more, whether from scenes of Max in prison, or scenes that reveal the sadness behind the lion’s smile.


5- THE GODFATHER, PART II (1974)

  • Director: Francis Ford Coppola
  • Author: Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo.
  • Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, John Casely, Talia Sher.
  • Rated on: IMDB 9
  • Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 97%
  • Producing Company: Paramount Pictures
  • Budget: $13 million.

The Godfather Part II continues the Godfather saga with two parallel stories. The first relates to current Mafia boss Michael Corleone in 1958 and 1959, 7 years after the events that concluded the first part. The other is a series of flashbacks, about his father, Vito Corleone from 1917 to 1925, and from his youth in Sicily to the founding of the Corleone Empire in New York City.

The Corleone family now enjoys irreplaceable control in New York, after the murders of the heads of the other four families in New York/New Jersey. The move to Nevada went smoothly and Michael Corleone took control of many hotels and casinos in the state. Michael tries to expand his business empire to Las Vegas, Florida, and Cuba before the revolution while facing his problems trying to keep his broken marriage and his relationship with his brother intact.

In a story intertwined with the present day, we see the backstory of Vito Corleone, from his upbringing and how his parents and brother were murdered by Don in their hometown of Corleone in Sicily to his escape as a boy to New York, to his adult life and his legend as one of New York’s most respected Mafiosi.


6- Scent of a Woman (1992)

  • Director: Martin Priest
  • Written by: Bo Goldman, Giovanni Arpino, and Dino Risi.
  • Cast: Al Pacino, Chris O’Donnell, James Reehorn, Gabriel Anwar.
  • Rated on: IMDB 8
  • Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 89%
  • Producing Company: Universal Pictures
  • Budget: $30 million.

Scent of a woman is about retired Colonel Frank Slade, who loses his sight while serving in the United States Army. The colonel seems a cruel and antisocial man, even with his family, he lives with his niece, and when she goes on vacation, she decides to find someone to accompany him during her absence. The first interview, but he gets the job.

After his niece leaves, the colonel reveals that he plans to go to New York for the weekend, which Charlie did not know and hesitated at first, but preferred to go with him. During their trip to New York, they get to know each other more, and an unexpected friendship develops between them, and he tells Colonel Charlie of his original purpose for this trip.

Al Pacino’s performance in this film has been described as the greatest ever in his career, and in cinema in general, for which he won the only Oscar – long overdue – as Best Actor in a Leading Role.


7- Carlito’s Way (1993)

  • Director: Brian de Palma
  • Author: David Koepp
  • Heroes: Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller, Luis Guzman, John Leguizamo, Jorge Purcell, Joseph Seravo and Viggo Mortensen.
  • Rated on: IMDB 7.9
  • Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 82%
  • Producing Company: Epic Productions.
  • Budget: $30 million.

Carlito’s Way is about Carlito Brigant, who is released from prison, after spending five years in it. Carlito vows to be righteous and live as a good citizen, even rekindling a romance with his ex, but of course, his transition to a new life is not easy, as he must resist every cynic, every opportunity to return to his old way of life.

However, Carlito’s partners don’t seem to want to let him live in peace, as his nephew forces him to engage in a gunfight in the pool room, his lawyers ask him for illegal favors that spiral out of control, and even an old friend tries to get him into trouble with the law. . However, Carlito decides to run to Florida and search for a new life, but falls into one last crisis, he is forced to escape from some people, who mistakenly believe he was behind the murder of their boss.


8- The Insider (1999)

  • Director: Michael Mann
  • Author: Michael Mann, Eric Roth, and Mary Brenner.
  • Heroes: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer.
  • Rated on: IMDB 7.8
  • Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 96%
  • Producing Company: Spyglass Media Group and Touchstone Pictures.
  • Budget: $90 million.

The Insider tells the true story of Jeffrey Wiegand, a former CEO of a major cigarette company called Big Tobacco, who decided to appear on 60 Minutes (1968). Prompted by producer Will Bergman, Jeffrey revealed that the tobacco industry had not only realized that cigarettes were addictive and harmful, but had deliberately increased it.

Unfortunately, both of this story’s protagonists learn the hard way that simply telling the truth isn’t enough and have been subjected to so much pressure and hard attempts to silence them that CBS executives have had to choose between revealing the biggest story in decades and risking the station itself. Or, keep the story off the TV, and hide the truth forever.


9- The Merchant of Venice (2004)

  • Director: Michael Radford
  • Author: Michael Radford
  • Heroes: Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lyn Collins.
  • Rated on: IMDB 7
  • Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 71%
  • Producing Company: British Film Council
  • Budget: $30 million.

Of course, the movie is based on William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, but the fact that the hero here is Al Pacino as Shylock; The evil moneylender gives the movie another life. Set in 16th century Venice, the film follows Bassanio, a young man who hopes to marry the beautiful Portia. But for a chance to win her hand in marriage, he needs a lot of money, which is an important element that he lacks.

Bassanio turns to his rich friend, the merchant Antonio, for help, but the latter invests all his money in his ships, so he is forced to borrow from the ruthless Jewish moneylender Shylock, and makes a deadly deal with him that, if Antonio does not pay the money without any interest after three months, he must get on one pound of his flesh instead.

Meanwhile, Shylock’s daughter Jessica runs away from home with all her money and jewelry with a Christian, and Shylock is enraged. On the other hand, Antony’s cargo sinks with three different ships, and consequently, he is unable to pay his debts with Shylock, so the Jew goes to the court of Venice demanding that his deal be carried out, and, rejecting many proposals, his hard heart accepts no agreement other than the one stipulated in their contract.


10- YOU DON’T KNOW JACK (2010)

  • Director: Barry Levinson.
  • Author: Adam Mazer.
  • Heroes: Al Pacino, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Danny Houston.
  • Rated on: IMDB 7.6
  • Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
  • Producing Company: HBO, B Holder Productions.
  • Budget: $18 million.

You Don’t Know Jack is about 61-year-old former pathologist Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who launches his campaign to support euthanasia, offering what he considers a humane and dignified option to terminally ill patients. With the help of his loyal friend Neil Nicholl, and his older sister Margo Janos, Kevorkian began providing “death counseling” services to his grateful clients, and also secured the support of Hemlock Society activist Janet Judd. But all that support infuriated the county attorney general’s office, and Dr. Jack was found guilty in the eyes of the Supreme Court.

Talented attorney Jeffrey Feiger agrees to represent Kevorkian in court without charge, and Jack is repeatedly acquitted, despite the enthusiastic efforts of his critics. While the media puts him at the forefront of national news coverage, Kevorkian continues his work to help more than 100 patients end their lives. Jack ultimately risks everything in his zeal, to change prevailing laws and challenge society’s attitude toward the determination of the right to die.


11- The Irishman (2019)

  • Director: Martin Scorsese.
  • Author: Stephen Zaillian.
  • Heroes: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Ray Romano, Bobby Canvale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Jesse Plemons, Harvey Keitel.
  • Rated on: IMDB 7.8
  • Rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 95%
  • Producing Company: Tribeca Productions, Sicily Productions, and Winkler Films.
  • Budget: $159 million.

The Irishman is based on Charles Brandt’s book I Heard You Paint Houses, which is based on the events of true crimes committed by an American Mafia, including the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, a mystery that has not yet been resolved.

The film is a sad, violent, and funny autobiography of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a World War II veteran who becomes a mafia killer and then a syndicate leader, and has had a long and sometimes politically charged friendship with Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa.

In the film, Frank recalls his life and the successes that defined his career, his relationships with the Bufalino crime family, and, in particular, the role he claims to have played in the disappearance of his lifelong friend Jimmy Hoffa, who mysteriously disappeared in late July 1975 at the age of 62.

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