It is difficult to be in the presence of Al Pacino and not think that something is being cooked: a coup, a murder, a master move that gives absolute control of the New York neighborhoods ... And more if he makes it easy: dressed with Sunglasses with leopard print, a long scarf falling on both sides of his robust figure and gesturing with his hands full of rings. His raspy voice and his Bronx accent make up a scene between reality and fiction: "Yes friends, it's me, even if it doesn't seem like it ... what happens is that I don't want you to see how my eyes cry."
Because the truth, as you could see in his passage through London - where he literally stumbled on the red carpet of the Bafta - is that as much as it hurts the viewer, and the world of cinema in general, Al Pacino has grown older. At 79, and without that subtracting a pinch of talent or energy - this past year he has worked in The Irish , Once upon a time in ... Hollywood and Hunters , the series that premieres Amazon Prime Video this Friday -, we can be before the last blows of Italian-American talent.
«What if I have now switched to streaming ? Na , I don't think so, these things are chasing me, they are coincidence normally. You go through life and things are happening to you, directing. For example, I stopped between 85 and 89 and stopped working ... until the money disappeared, ”the Oscar winner explained with a sneer during a meeting with the press in London for the Hunters premiere in which he was present THE WORLD. “Even so, I was fine, but once a guy in a park in New York came and shouted at me: 'Hey, what's wrong with you, where have you been? Go back to the movies at once . ' There is nothing like someone talking to you that way.
In his first appearance in the new universe of the series, Pacino, who acknowledges not seeing "too much television" even though he now has "all platforms such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video," plays the leader of a Jewish squad that is dedicated to hunt Nazi exiles in the US. The plot, which runs 30 years after the end of World War II, combines explicit violence, tragedy and even comedy in a way that begins to become the hallmark of the video platform of the e-commerce giant.
"It is a very complex issue, production and history are very eclectic, but at the same time it is a hard, funny and tragic script that sometimes makes your tongue lock," he analyzes. "I already had prior knowledge, but it is very difficult to try to understand the Holocaust without having lived it," he explains: "Even so, I grew up in the South Bronx, which was one of the most integrating neighborhoods of postwar society, although of course, fundamentally of Jews. We climbed to the roof at night and listened to that cacophony of dialects. It was impressive now that I think about it. It was very diverse , we were all from different places and different nationalities, but we had common goals.
«Many of my friends from that time died because of their heroin addiction. He had one at that time who was a brilliant guy, but at the same time a savage, he liked to steal buses and he was already a junkie when he was 14 years old. The fact is that this boy always carried a Dostoevsky book in his back pocket. He died very young. There were many of these dramas when I was little, and I think that really fueled who I am », remember now with the melancholy that gives the experience. "My best friends were Jews, Irish, Poles ... This kind of life was poor, yes, but at the same time very enriching ."
About to become an octogenarian, Pacino says he starts analyzing his career in a different way. «Before, I only watched my movies before they left, because I felt like I could have something to say, but then I didn't see them again. Now I do, surely because of being getting old ... lately I blame it on all that, "he says between laughs.
"It's amazing because when I watch my movies I start to wonder what I can learn from them," he says. "It's like looking at photographs of the past , I hope it's something that happens to me, but the truth is that I'm very surprised at some of the things I've done, I feel I understand them more," he adds: "My children don't want to see my movies, they don't care much, but I'm going to make Logan (Lerman) - the co-star - watch them.
A young pupil in the path of the hunter
"That was our first conversation when David (Weil) - creator of 'Hunters' - and Nikki (Tuscan) - executive producer - contacted me for the role. I asked them: What is morality for you? Do you have to become a bad person to fight the bad guys? ", explains Logan Lerman (California, 1992), who plays Jonah Heidelbaum, a young Jew who joins the squad of 'hunters' to avenge his grandmother's murder at the hands of a Nazi. "Mine was a hero. He stole potato skins risking his life to feed his companions in Auschwitz, and he resisted even though he worked collecting the bodies of those they killed. He wanted to make it clear that the Jews were something else that victims there, we also show courage, "explains Weil, who wrote the script for the series five years ago.
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