Sea of Love

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson

Directed by: Harold Becker

RS: Not Rated

1989 Thriller

Sea of Love

562 (5-10-89)
With 'Sea Of Love,' his first good movie in fourteen years, Al Pacino ends a hellish losing streak: Bobby Deerfield (1977),...And Justice for All (1979), Cruising (1980), Author! Author! (1982), Scar-face (1983), Revolution (1985). I can't think of a great actor, and Pacino is a great actor, who has thrown us so many curveballs. These films, like Pacino's performances in them, aren't forgivable or forgettable. They're memorably, indefensibly atrocious. As a Cuban drug kingpin in Scarface, he affected a Charo accent ("Jeah, I wan my fookin juman rights"). In Revolution, his Glasgow-born American colonist sounded like a time traveler from the Bronx ("Who da hell's zat?").

Sea of Love, a lowdown, gorgeously lurid thriller, can't make up for those career crushers. It's not in the same league with such Pacino classics as Serpico, Scarecrow, Dog Day Afternoon and the two Godfather pictures. But Pacino is terrific in it: vital, charming, funny, torchy and touching. Playing Detective Frank Keller of the NYPD, Pacino reminds us of what drew us to him so strongly in the past.

It was back in 1969 that Pacino made his debut in a Patty Duke trifle called Me, Natalie. "Listen, do you put out?" he asks Duke on the dance floor. When she shakes her head, he breezes off with an indignant "Somebody like you ought to be asking me." The scene is over in fifty-four seconds (I clocked it), but you don't forget his haunting intensity.

By 1971, Pacino had the lead in The Panic in Needle Park, a wrenching drug-abuse film. He reaped raves and snared the pivotal role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972). Reluctantly taking over the crime business from his old man (Marlon Brando), Michael finds his humanity sapped; at the end, he appears to have turned to stone. Pacino's performances in The Godfather and its 1974 sequel represent acting at its best. He earned Oscar nominations for both films, another nomination as a cop fighting corrupt cops in Serpico (1973) and another for his bisexual bank robber in Dog Day Afternoon (1975). In 1977, Pacino was so popular that his photo hung in the bedroom of the Tony Manero character played by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Tony chanted, "Al Pa-ci-no, Al Pa-ci-no," like an incantation.

It's hard to say when it all went flooey. It's easier to pinpoint why: The fun and spontaneity went out of Pacino's acting. As his projects got bigger, so did his pretensions. He took on the hefty issues -- the legal system (... And Justice for All) and drugs (Scarface). Even his one domestic comedy, the cloying Author! Author!, dealt with the rigors of single parenthood. No one should knock an actor's desire to stretch. But Pacino's insular, solemn approach locked out the audience.

Sea of Love gives him a chance to do something new onscreen: loosen up. It's about time. Pacino turns fifty next year. His acting here reflects a welcome maturity and self-mocking humor. Pacino's Frank Keller is an undercover cop with moxie. To trap some crooks, he passes himself off as the pint-size former Yankee Phil Rizzuto. Any Al Pacino movie that includes a joke about the star's height and age is off to a promising start.

Frank is a cop facing a midlife crisis. His wife has left him. Worse, after twenty years on the force, he's eligible for retirement. The idea terrifies him. At night, an insomnia-suffering Frank watches television, boozes until he's bleary and makes self-pitying phone calls to his ex. Frank is a man in desperate need of distraction.

He gets it in the form of a serial-murder case. Someone -- the cops assume it's a she and have dubbed her the Shooter -- is blowing holes in the naked bodies of men who have placed personal ads in a Manhattan magazine. There's a caveat: The Shooter only responds to ads that rhyme. The Shooter uses the Phil Phillips golden oldie "Sea of Love" as accompaniment to the first murder. Director Harold Becker (The Onion Field, The Boost) shows a trussed-up man writhing in bed on his belly, but we don't see the killer. This is a whodunit, but, sadly, not a very logical one. Richard Price, the novelist (Bloodbrothers) turned screenwriter (The Color of Money), is a whiz at pungent dialogue but a bust at mystery plotting.

To catch the culprit, Pacino and his cop buddy Sherman -- that gifted wild man John Goodman of TV's Roseanne -- place a rhyming ad. Their plan is to meet with the ladies who respond at a local bistro. Among this sea of women, Frank happens on Helen, played by Ellen Barkin with her famous "bedroom eyes" in full smolder. Helen, who favors spike heels (she manages a shoe store), leather and bare skin, doesn't thrill to Frank, who is posing as a printing executive. Eventually, Frank breaks the ice and the rules; he beds the suspect. "Should we dust your dick for prints?" sneers Sherman.

Pacino and Barkin go at their lovemaking with get-the-hoses vigor. Frank stays aroused when he thinks that Helen may be the Shooter; he's besotted. Their groping scene in a brightly lit supermarket has a kinky Blue Velvet allure. Before this, Pacino had never been much of a movie Romeo. Even when he was paired with an actress he was involved with off-screen (Marthe Keller, Diane Keaton), sparks failed to fly. With Barkin, Pacino sets off fireworks. They put the sizzle back into screen romance.

To Pacino and Barkin's credit, they also go deeper, mining hidden reserves of feeling. In a riveting comeback performance that recaptures the humor and heart he'd misplaced after Dog Day Afternoon, Pacino electrifies. He lets Frank's accumulated longing pour out. Barkin is a spellbinding, fiercely intelligent actress. She reveals how Helen's raunchy game playing is an escape. Helen is a devoted single mother with strong appetites and a bad history with men. She thinks that anonymous sex protects her from more pain.

Pacino and Barkin do such a splendid job of making us care about these two emotionally bruised characters that the murder plot seems like even more of a contrivance. We want to find out what kind of life these two might make together, not go chasing after familiar jolts. But why carp about a suspenseful, seductive, wildly erotic movie that offers a chance to see a singular actor jump-start a stalled career? That's an offer you don't refuse.