SCENT OF A WOMAN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: SCENT OF A WOMAN is slick and well-
made, making 157 minutes seem like a lot less. It makes the
audience feel all the right emotions at the right turns. But
ultimately there is less here than meets the eye. While the
last fifteen minutes will please some, the same segment will
strike others as pat and contrived. Rating: high +1 (-4 to
+4).
Curiously, SCENT OF A WOMAN is a film of a man's journey from childhood to adulthood. Charlie Simms (played by Chris O'Donnell) goes to a very upper-class private prep school where the nicest kids are super-snobs and most others are worse. Charlie has two problems over Thanksgiving weekend. In the days just before Thanksgiving he saw some students setting up a prank that went very wrong. Now the administration is using both a big carrot and a big stick to pry out what Charlie knows. His other problem is Lt. Colonel Frank Slade (played by Al Pacino). Charlie has been hired to care for Slade over the weekend. Slade is very much like the Jack Nicholson character in A FEW GOOD MEN, but now a blind alcoholic who hates the world. What makes the story curious is that it is Slade who must make the journey to adulthood. Charlie learns a different lesson, that of seizing opportunity.
Charlie's job is just simple baby-sitting, but Slade has other ideas. He drags Charlie to New York City on a mission of Slade's own planning. As you could predict, the two men who start by hating each other have adventures together and learn to respect and admire each other. Their togetherness is just what each turns out to need, to nobody's surprise.
Much has been said about how good Pacino's acting is in SCENT OF A WOMAN, but in fact he seems to overpower every sentence he speaks. Like his character, he forces himself to be the center of attention in every scene where he appears. If Chris O'Donnell is remembered for the film, it is for the scenes where Pacino did not appear. Incidentally, this film also exploits the myth that blind people seem to develop their other senses to super-human levels. Pacino's Slade can judge the quality of a salute without actually seeing it. He also can identify the perfume and even the soap a woman uses, hence the title of the film. Bo Goldman's screenplay has good dialogue but ultimately falls into the not uncommon cinematic irony of pulling all the familiar strings and pushing all the familiar buttons to tell the audience not to let themselves be manipulated nor should they manipulate others. I give this SCENT OF A WOMAN high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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