Rating: 
Summary: A confused mess!
Review: A great cast is wasted in this boring, pointless film. After a terrific start, it all falls flat, and very quickly. This had a lot of potential, but ultimately, it goes nowhere. For one, the film doesn't know if it wants to be a character study or a suspense thriller. It doesn't work as either of them, but had lots of potential had it taken the latter route. As it is, everything is a jumbled mess that doesn't make much sense and entertains even less. The actors somewhat redeem it, but it's not worth seeing to begin with, not even for Pacino fans.
Rating:
Summary: In Spite of Its Worthy Cause, the Film Is Too Slow and Slack
Review: Al Pacino is a New York publicist Eli Wurman, who, you'll soon notice, has been in this business too long, perhaps. Haggard-looking, always popping pills in his mouth, Eli knows it's time for him to leave the city forever with his understanding love Victoria played by Kim Basinger, but not before his dream is realized -- one dinner party to unite the two powers of the city.Al Pacino, one of the greatest actors of America, gives his strong performance again, and you also get good supporting players -- besides Baisinger, Ryan O'Neil, Tea Leoni, Richaed Shiff, Bill Nunn, MArk Webber, and Robert Klein. The camera is by Peter Deming ("Mulholland Drive"), and the film is executive produced by Robert Redford. However, though "People I Know" presents some incisive moments revealing the insider knowledge of PR agents, and the complex politics of the city, the film does not reach the height I expect from this cast. Let me be honest here -- it was dull. The story is monotonous, not knowing what to do with the main character Eli, who just wanders in the streets. The director Daniel Algrant is content with showing the materials which themselves are good, but he does not know how to raise our interest in the people I actually want to know, but couldn't. I know the word "low-key," and Al's performance is suitably so, but if you portray a man whose life is out of control, and who knows that, and who still wants to get back some dignity back to his life, you have to let this guy show some merits or sparkling moments to shine as a human. The film, however, only allows Eli to get drunk and roam, so this guy looks too disheveled to accomplish the honorable job he was trying to do. The conclusion of the dinner party scene is incredible, and I don't know why Kim Baisinger's character has to care him so much. And there are also incredible things here -- there is a secret party in the fashion of "Eyes Wide Shut" for instance -- and the supprting players are mostly wasted; Ms. Baisnger's fans will find her role is too small, and you might miss beautiful Polina Porizkova if you blink. Excuse me for my negative review, but I cannot stand watching these good actors in a badly made film. I respect the intention of the filmmakers, but I am not the only one who think, "If Sidney Lumet had helmed the film." We need his skills which must have made this film a much tighter and definitely better one.
Rating: 
Summary: Some Incisive Moments, but Mostly Meandering.
Review: Eli Wurman (Al Pacino) is a down-and-out New York publicist whose career has seen better days. Once the friend and confidant of the entertainment elite, he has only one remaining A-list client, playboy movie star Cary Launer (Ryan O'Neal). Undaunted in his support of humanitarian causes, Eli insists that Cary speak at a charity benefit that he is organizing when Cary asks him to do some dirty work -bail a girlfriend out of jail. After bailing Jilly (Tea Leoni) out, Eli reluctantly takes her to look for an important item that she has lost. The next day, while frantically trying to organize his charity benefit, a drug-addled Eli tries to piece together what he saw the night before and what it might mean.
"People I Know" is a hybrid political thriller and character study. As a political thriller it's interesting, but not thrilling enough. It spares no one in its revelation of the hypocrisy and abuse of power behind a New York Senate race. The indictment of the city's most prominent citizens, although obviously unrealistic, is unsettling enough to be interesting. The film's best scenes feature Richard Schiff being ruthless as eminent businessman Elliot Sharansky. Al Pacino's Eli Wurman doesn't fare so well. The film takes place over a period of only about 26 hours, during which Eli is unraveling, both emotionally and physically, all while organizing a benefit and getting caught up in political intrigues beyond his control. I wish the film had the urgency that the situation implies. Eli still has a salesman's pitch, but is drug-dependent and only intermittently lucid. This doesn't really work. It makes him difficult to watch and only passively involved in what's going on. It doesn't help that Pacino's Georgian accent is as inconsistent as his character's thought processes. "People I Know", like Eli, has some moments of clarity, but it needed to be a lot tighter.
The DVD: Bonus features include 2 deleted scenes, with commentary, and an audio commentary by director Dan Algrant and Gregory Mosher, who has nothing to do with the film. Mosher is a writer and director himself and must be a friend of Algrant's. This arrangement works better than I might expect. Mosher is able to point out elements of the film from the perspective of a viewer, which Algrant can then comment on. The commentary is about filming -the actors, make-up, wardrobe, anecdotes, etc.- not about the film's themes. It's a reasonably good commentary.
Rating: 
Summary: How Could Al Pacino Work in such a Terrible Film
Review: I bought this movie primarily because Al Pacino was in it. However, I learned today that casting an excellent actor is not sufficient in creating a memorable movie. This movie lacked many important attributes -- character development, a plot, a good script (people don't actually speak the way they do in the film), and characters one can care about. This movie failed every attribute imaginable, and yet it had fairly good actors in it. All the creative designers of this movie ought to be fired and promptly banned from the film industry.
Rating:
Summary: A Waste Of Time
Review: I rented this yesterday, for the sole fact it's an Al Pacino movie. Once I brought it home, I came on the net, on Amazon, and decided to see what everyone's thoughts on this movie were. Everyone had basically the same response, but I thought maybe I'd enjoy it, even though a lot of people didn't. After watching it, my thoughts turned out to be the same.
Pacino was good, as he always is. I thought Richard Schiff was also good, even though he wasn't in it much. But the rest was garbage. The movie was slow, the plot was terrible. Thank god it was only 1 hr. 40mins.
Avoid this film. The only reason it gets one star is because Pacino was good in it.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't be so sad Mister Pacino!....
Review: I've been admiring Al Pacino for years, and though i must admit this film could had been better than it is... it's always an extraordinary lesson for us to go and see such an amazing actor playing like that!! in many scenes, the despear he gives us sounds like if he was playing his own life!!!
The character is not an actor here, (or should i say a "movie-star"??) but there is such an evidence between what he plays and what we can easily suppose he must endure as an actor too, that we are sometimes more than
deeply touched by this sudden broken voice he has....
It's difficult to me as a french to express very well what i exactally felt after that.... but it reminds me this famous sentence of Maria Rilke, that i heard it once Pacino used to like too: "Who speaks of triumph? Endure is everything"...
Rating:
Summary: From the Founder of the All-Movie Guide
Review: Just a terrible movie, through and through. When Pacino strikes out, he does it big time. We get to watch Pacino play a burned out, sleep-deprived, drug-confused PR man wandering around New York. And there is no relief. His supposed-Southern accent is worse than a joke; it reminds you in every phrase what a waste of time you are stuck in.
Kim Basinger, who look great, is hardly on screen at all as his would-be lover, but Pacino looks more like her father (albeit on his deathbed) than a lover. Why would she have anything to do with this loser? This pairing just does not compute.
Ryan O’neil, Richard Schiff, and Robert Klein turn in good work, but far too little to save the film, where Pacino is on-screen almost all the time looking like someone hit him with a baseball bat. When Pacino is good, he can be very, very good, but when he is bad, he is horrid. Here he is horrid. Sorry.
-- Michael Erlewine, founder All-Movie Guide (allmovie.com)
Rating:
Summary: INDULGENT BUT FLAGRANT BLACK COMEDY
Review: Not sure when this movie came and went, it's fairly recent, but it's not half as bad as some vicious reviews suggest!
Even a casual observer would see through the screenplay; it may very well have been written with Pacino specifically in mind. He brandishes his characteristic fresh-off-a-cubbyhole look, eyes haggard face drawn and hair in a perpetual rooster-comb, growing increasingly haunted as a sleepless PR agent who spills gobs of buttered lies to keep himself in business and his clients out of trouble. Kim Basinger is adequate but uninspired in her accessory role.
Much of the self-important sobstory stuff may be grossly incredible but as a sharp jab at the prevailing strain of New York showbiz sentimentality, it's gruesome and on the nose. There's even a subplot involving a power struggle between a wealthy industrialist and a primping social-activist that calls to mind touches of Bonfire of the Vanities.
On the flipside, it does suffer from somewhat over-baked characterization. The chatty, even preachy script shrouds in a politically charged thriller what would have been a bare-bones character study; the result is not really all that charged but fiendishly insightful so it keeps us hooked. The final shot is so fascinating it made me forgive all the cracks that came before it.
Certainly a rental if you want to snuggle up with an offbeat but somewhat heavy theme.
Rating:
Summary: Pacino Good, Movie Baaaaaaaaaad!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: Pacino does a decent job of portraying the gradual decay of a man who compromised his morals in his youth.
Too bad the story telling and pacing is mind numbingly horrid.
The only saving grace for this movie is the great actors involved.
Ryan O'Neal does good job portraying a morally ambiguous actor. Kim Bassinger delivers on the dot. It's too bad there wasn't more of a back story about her and the Pacino character's brother.
As usual, Tea Leoni is wasted. What's up with that? She is a good actress, remember 'Flirting with Disaster'? What's with the choice of roles?
On the whole the movie is mildly interesting because of the actors but ends up nowhere. It's an incredible waste of talent.
One wonders what this could have been with a decent story and script.
The movie deserves no stars but I am giving it a single star because of the talent involved.
Rating:
Summary: A miscast misfire
Review: Problems with a feature film usually start with the script. "People I Know" isn't any different. The meandering script alternates between being a character study of the aging has-been publicist and a suspense thriller involving a secret (unfortunately) Jewish cabal which controls politics and finance in New York at the same time as its few members (a billionaire Jewish financier, a rabbi, a prominent Jewish doctor, and an ACLU board member) engage in a drug and sex orgy straight out of "Eyes Wide Shut."
The suspense thriller is the far more interesting part of the movie, though why it has to be a Jewish cabal, and thus play on the worst of the Anti-Semitic myths perpetuated by the "Protocals of the Elders of Zion," totally escapes me. But where this part of the story intersects with the character study is an obvious and total mess. The cabal wants back from Eli, the protagonist publicist, an incriminating recording of an "Eyes Wide Shut" evening. Eli carries it around in his coat pocket the whole time, but though the cabal doesn't hesitate to resort to murder and intrigue, and they even corner Eli in their headquarters and demand it, they don't bother to frisk him? It's truly bizarre, like two scripts which can't intersect logically.
As to the character study, it doesn't stand a chance by casting Pacino as the lead and the luminescent Kim Basinger as the widow who pursues him. I love Al Pacino most of the time, but he's too charismatic and strong to pull off a guy who is supposed to be something of a wet noodle who at the same time is doggedly single minded about keeping doing what he's always been doing (second rate publicist work). Pacino tries to accomplish this by feigning a Southern accent so pronounced as to make him sound more effeminate and silly than pathetic. To have Kim Basinger chasing after him and him not respond is so unbelievable that I thought at first he was supposed to be a closeted gay -- which would have been a fascinating twist-- and hence Pacino's effeminate drawl, but nope, it's just bad casting.
I have read some reviews of the film and it has now been explained to me that Eli is fighting a battle between old New York Jewish idealism and new New York self-interested egotism. Pacino doesn't pull it off and neither does the script. I watched the film closely and I saw little character issue with it. In the few moments when this is dealt with directly, the film falls back into its monotonous repetition that Eli is old and tired and doesn't know when to call it quits.
I read Ebert's interview with Pacino in which Pacino said he wanted the film done in an edgy, all digital style. That might have been an interesting way to watch Eli's descent. But that's not at all the way it was filmed. Whatever its budget, the film is glossy and sleek, looking like any first run theatrical release, and against this backdrop, Pacino's character just seems an overwrought, boring, illogical oddity, not a reflection of an inner turmoil.
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