'Manglehorn' Trailer: Al Pacino Is Tough to Be Around

David Gordon Green returns with his follow-up to last year’s critically-acclaimed Joe, and although both Green and Al Pacino appear to be trying very hard, it doesn’t look like the director can do the same for Pacino that he did for Nicolas Cage. Credit where credit’s due: this does look like one of Pacino’s best performances in recent memory.

Manglehorn stars Pacino as Angelo Manglehorn (now that’s a name), an aging, reclusive loner pining over the loss of his life. Much of the trailer features Pacino’s voiceover narration, reading letters he’s written to his wife. “Dear Clara, the world has changed so much,” etc. This is a quieter version of Pacino, certainly, but early reviews of Manglehorn from the festival circuit suggest that the film isn’t quite on par with Green’s last two efforts, Joe and Prince Avalanche.

Still, it’s good to see Green exploring dramatic avenues again in recent years following his detour into comedies, which yielded mixed results with Pineapple Express, Your Highness and The Sitter.

Here’s the official synopsis for his latest:

Reclusive small town locksmith Angelo Manglehorn has never quite recovered from losing the love of his life, Clara. Fixated on her memory, he feels closer to his beloved cat than the people around him and prefers to find comfort in his work and daily routine. Still, he forges on with his tenuous human connections, maintaining intermittent contact with his son, taking misplaced pride in a former protégé gone astray, and establishing a cautious friendship with a kindhearted woman from the local bank. As this solitary man approaches the possibility of new love, he finds himself at a crossroads between remaining consumed by the past and embracing the present. Manglehorn is a movingly humanistic portrait of a man rendered with unsentimental simplicity and idiosyncratic humor.

Manglehorn also stars Holly Hunter, Chris Messina and Harmony Korine (the director of Spring Breakers), and arrives in theaters on June 19.