Pacino, Nicholson and De Niro vs. old age

September 25th, 2008, 9:27 am · 1 Comment · posted by Colin Stewart

Photos: Top, Al Pacino, 68, and Robert De Niro, 65, in “Righteous Kill.” Below, Jack Nicholson in 2006 at age 68. Reader survey: Who is aging most gracefully?

Which actor is aging with the most grace – Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson or Robert De Niro?

Film critic John Podhoretz would vote for Nicholson, 71, as he makes clear in his review of the new police movie “Righteous Kill.” He calls the film “at best entirely predictable and formulaic and at worst a terribly sad display of vanity on the downward slope.” Nicholson isn’t even in the movie, but he wins all the praise.

He’s not alone in panning the movie, which achieved only a 23 percent positive rating in the Rotten Tomatoes site’s overview of film critics. But other critics tended to focus on Pacino, 68, and De Niro, 65, as great “veteran actors” who were working with a poor script.

But for Podhoretz, actors’ attitude to aging is a problem, as he writes in the Weekly Standard. The root cause is a culture of “facelifts, and Botox, and hair implants, and hair extensions” that actors and actresses overuse in their “efforts to halt the ravages of time on the human body.”

Despite that critique, he doesn’t actually fault Pacino or De Niro for overindulging in cosmetic medicine, which isn’t apparent in their wrinkled faces. But he blasts them for related shortcomings — clumsily trying to adopt a youthful style and taking roles that are suitable only for younger actors.

Podhoretz writes:

Pacino clearly wants people to think he can play someone in his mid-40s. As a result, he has allowed himself to turn into a freakish-looking person, with boot-blacked hair that stands up like a kewpie doll’s and a wardrobe more appropriate for Johnny Cash than a veteran of the NYPD.

For his part, De Niro spends most of the movie with a puzzled expression on his face, as though he wandered onto the set by accident from his Tribeca restaurant Nobu. This is especially true when he is called on to conduct a torrid, sadomasochistic affair with a forensics officer played by 37-year-old Carla Gugino, who not only is young enough to be his daughter, but actually looks like Robert De Niro’s daughter.

In these scenes, De Niro has the decency to look embarrassed. He knows he’s in this for the paycheck; Pacino is in it to stave off the Angel of Death.

Nicholson is much different, the critic says:

There’s a reason that, alone among the actors of their generation, Jack Nicholson is still a major star at 71. Twenty years ago he decided to act his age, and has allowed himself to travel onward with the years.

In so doing, he has maintained and even deepened an essential aspect of any great motion picture performer’s aura: his dignity.

Do you agree? You can add your two cents’ worth in this reader survey:

Who is aging most gracefully?