What makes it different from others?

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

I really don't understand why so many people are so turned off by this film! Granted, it is a more of a series of character and behavior study sketches, than a fully developed story, but not by much, the story that is here is compelling. The outstanding performances more than make up for any short comings in the story as a whole. I just don't see how people were so bored with the film - I found it engrossing. Perhaps people often don't know what do do with a film that tells its story more through events, human interaction and behavior, than through conventional narrative. This is more a in the mold of a small wonderfully effective film like "Dinner Rush" than the conventional Hollywood script. Or, you could even look at it like "Broadway Danny Rose with Prescription Drugs and Opium"! It works on that level as well. But it definitely is worth a look though! And the performances are stellar!

slightly better than crocodile dundee in los angeles, the worst movie i've ever seen. i'll give pacino the benefit of the doubt that perhaps he was trying to make a boring character interesting, but the experiment failed miserably. the accent itself was awful, but it was such a bizarre one that he slipped in and out of it several times throughout the movie. the ending was unequivocally the most obvious and flat out uncreative conclusion i've ever seen. it was so bad i couldn't believe that's how it actually ended. but mercifully, it was over. ***spoiler alert*** given how the movie ends only exacerbates the suspension of reality the plot asks us to take when the thug searching the hotel room doesn't bother to look in the bathroom. the movie should have ended right then and there. too bad it didn't.

This film is about a period that has come to an end, a complete end, before the earthquake, mudslide and volcanic eruption known as the Twin Tower Terrorist Attack or 9/11 for short. New York politics, and beyond American politics seen through the eyes of a mediocre, Jewish PR agent who is losing his main customer and who is still giving time to Afro-American causes not understanding that they don't want and they don't need white Jewish good-doing benevolent liberals to take care of them. They have come of age and start understanding they have to take care of themselves. On the other side, the supposedly liberal white politicians have become so corrupted that they cannot stand upright any more and they just want to lie low and disappear from the public eye before it's too late. A new generation has not come out of the wings yet and they are more or less obliged to last a little longer. The subject of the film is that trite and that superficial if not superfluous, and the final murder does not add anything to this rather thin plot. Yet the film is a rather good film because Al Pacino is acting his part so well that he really looks the part of the poor absolutely conscious old man who is doing one more gig before going out for ever to some solitary and telephone-deprived barn on a Virginia farm. Is he overacting as some think? I don't think so. In fact he is surrounded by actors who are second zone as compared to him, so that what is good acting looks like overacting against that background. The real question is then why did Al Pacino accept to act in a film with no one next to him that could compete with his long experience and his phenomenal professional profile? No one can answer this question, except Al Pacino himself. But that is often what happens with aging actors. They are only proposed films that are made for them individually so that they end up shining bright in a dark alley and blinding us at the same time instead of making other actors sparkle and glow.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Don't believe the negative reviews for this film. Every negative review seems to miss the point. This is a character study about an idealist whose lost his way. It's got drugs and hookers and a subplot that could've hijacked this film and made it a simple thriller, but it's so much wiser than that as it follows Pacino instead. He's understated here and shows a more quiet side. We know he can play very mannered characters, and characters with a lot of octane and vitality, but here we're looking at shades of that character he played in 'Insomnia', tired, weary, but still marching on, wanting to do some good with his city. Just look at his scenes when he's trying to get that charity event to go off without a hitch and in that you'll see the heart of this film. Good stuff.