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Glengarry Glen Ross Movie Review

Glengarry Glen Ross is a 1992 drama film directed by James Foley and starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Jonathan Pryce and Kevin Spacey in an undeniably incredible cast that is one of the best in movie history.

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“You never open your mouth

until you know what the shot is“

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However, no great cast can ever truly compensate for the weak plot, which is exactly what happened here unfortunately. The movie is surely important in its exploration of the real estate business and the many notorious tactics that these people would go to in order to save their jobs, but a more in-depth and interesting analysis of these themes would have made for a better movie while better pacing would have made it more enjoyable.

So, what is my main issue with the film? Well, that has to be the extensive dialogue. I usually am a big proponent of dialogue-heavy dramas, but this time around the dialogue was so annoying and one-note that it ended up being the one thing that diminished the impact of the entire movie. It was just a couple of points repeated throughout and even though some of the insults were quite funny, most of it was forgettable and actually rather tedious, leaving me bored, which was a problem as it’s not a particularly long movie. The excessive machismo was also unbearable throughout.

Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey are by far the most memorable actors here. Spacey in one of his earliest roles and Lemmon in one of his last roles. Lemmon is vulnerable and very memorable while Spacey is just as bitchy and as manipulative as he would be in his later more famous films from the nineties. As for the others, Pacino is pretty good, and of course Alec Baldwin is phenomenal and very entertaining per usual in a role that was new for this adaptation of the stage play, and he was perfectly cast for it.

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All the other players in Glengarry Glen Ross are more forgettable. They are all great, but they needed more screen time obviously. The pacing is weak, the structure also is problematic and technically speaking, the movie resembled a play way too much. It’s just all very overrated for me.