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PEOPLE I KNOW Send This Review to a Friend
A dark, moody film set in New York, "People I Know" provides an opportunity for Al Pacino to give an intense, riveting performance as a press agent in decline but desperately trying to hang on to his career and his life. Pacino plunges deep into the character of Eli Wurman, who is caught in a whirl of problems as he uses his connections and wiles to stay afloat, but is steadily sinking into depression and peril.
On the one hand Wurman is staging a benefit for mistreated Nigerians, a benefit he needs to pull off successfully in order to help his PR status. It is to take place in The Palm at the restaurant's 50th Street location and he is calling in favors to make it work. But meanwhile, Ryan O'Neal as movie star Cary Launer, Wurman's last celebrity client, demands that he do the demeaning work of cleaning up after Launer's involvement with a starlet (Téa Leoni), who has been arrested. Launer is planning to run for public office and needs to avoid an impending scandal. Wurman has to swallow his pride and do yet another job for a client whom he resents. The mess is deeper than he suspects, and Wurman, after witnessing a murder, finds his life in danger.
The one hope is represented by the arrival of Kim Basinger as Victoria, the widow of Wurman's brother, and Basinger is sympathetic as someone who could bring a new life to Wurman if he would only leave New York and go back to Virginia with her. But her very presence deepens his anxieties and conflicted feelings about himself.
"People I Know" gives a nasty portrait of the publicity world, perhaps the nastiest since "Sweet Smell of Success." It is populated with conspiratorial politicians and businessmen, as well as ambitious climbers on the make. Director Dan Algrant, working from an original script by Jon Robin Baitz, gives the story a film noir tone and look, but mainly relies on the depth of Pacino's performance to provide the force that drives the film, which is quirky and intriguing and defies easy categorization. A Miramax Pictures release.
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