Hannibal's Antlers, Sauvignon Blanc

This last fact was the real issue, for the way grew straight from the moment one recognized that the poet essentially can't be concerned with the act of dying. Let him deal with the sickest of the sick, it is still by the act of living that they appeal to him -- Henry James

There is a preoccupation with 88 Minutes that is analogous to fascination with a ruined edifice, not that this is anything new in the subversions of how we entertain ourselves. Whatever Jon Avnet and Pacino intended, the end result of their two film partnerships, both of which I viewed as if invited to consume rancid mayonnaise, spells out a curious exhaustion, an interesting dialectic with superstardom, thriller formulas, going through the motions, slasher fears, and using Vancouver as a location, this last clause maintaining my consistency towards a dig at Canadian models. Look at William Forsythe's face as the film limps toward it's drooling close. The misdirected agent wants to be an obstacle to the (gangster) psychiatrist trying to get to the bottom of the puzzle. Forsythe is supposed to provide resistance. Pacino throws one of his hyper fits and the camera cuts to Forsythe's face as he simply says "okay". There is an unintended dichotomy here, as if Avnet falls out of the visual framework he never believed in the first place, and what we see is a worn out entity, the face of a tired character actor who might as well have been evocative of the Egyptian empire in disintegration after the death of Ramesses2.0.

Do we really believe in Pacino's vendetta riddled shrink? Julie Andrews gives a more plausible rendering as the analyst who gives in to being Burt Reynold's lover. She is able to exaggerate the clinician with more credibility than Pacino could command in this project. Whether he was on pain killers or not during filming, that he literally looks doped up sparks a conversation, perhaps not with the vibrant addict of Needle Park, but certainly with his dual interaction with Robert De Niro in Righteous Kill, which belies their struggle in Heat. Akin to what the end of Bronson's career signified via the Death Wish saga. Aesthetic malaise as a terminal disease.

My reference to Bryan Fuller's cinematic creativity with the countenance of Mads Mikkelsen has layered meanings I have left somewhat opaque, somewhat unexplained, but they apply here to both the Harris character and Pacino's aging flophouse strategy, its unintended disastrous result.