Manglehorn

David Gordon Green is getting his mojo back. After the misfires of mainstream comedies Your Highness and The Sitter, the Nic Cage vehicle Joe was a return to form. This low key character study about a lonely man working through depression further cements the comeback. It has its bumpy moments but a chilled Pacino and a reinvigorated Hunter see things through.

Pacino is the eponymous sad-sack, a former Little League baseball coach turned locksmith who spends his days freeing kids from locked cars, figuring out why his cat has lost its appetite, battling his flashy businessman son (Messina), and flirting with chirpy bank teller Dawn (Hunter). Through a tired voiceover we learn that Manglehorn pines for former love Clara, writing her epic love letters that later turn up in his mailbox stamped ‘return to sender’. We don’t know if she wants nothing to do with him, if she’s moved, if she’s forgotten about him, if she’s dead, or if she even exists. As Manglehorn attempts to pull himself out of this funk, he asks Dawn on a date...

For the most part David Gordon Green, working from first time writer Paul Logan’s script, keeps it real and relatable. This is a world of cheap dinners in cafeterias, of slot jockeys, of struggles to pay for a pet cat’s surgery, the annoying guy who won’t shut up (a wonderful Harmony Korine), the tendency we all have of pushing the self-destruct button, and our ability to hurt the ones closest to us. The latter offers up a memorable scene: a cringey dinner date has a heartbroken Hunter sit through a Pacino speech on how no one could ever possibly match up to Clara.

Green’s biggest achievement is pulling a quiet turn from Pacino. There’s no shouting, no bullying of the cast into the corner, no hoo-ha from the Hoo-Ha Man. It’s an introverted performance, something akin to Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt, with Pacino using that furrowed brow and those droopy eyes to good effect.

But then there are those bumpy moments like the dream sequences where Pacino is up a tree with a balloon, when Dawn’s colleague is serenaded by a gentleman caller at work, and when we learn what’s behind the locked door just off the kitchen. And Logan’s script is prone to the odd heavy metaphor, like the hornet’s nest that has taken up residence in Manglehorn’s mailbox.