There is only one thing not to love about Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman: the very serious hunk of jarlsberg that must be downed while watching it. Certainly, the film reeks of early 1990s overwritten performance-vehicle sentimental pieces of cheese whiz. But that goes down much better if you take it with a grain of salt.

Al Pacino, obviously, offers up an amazing performance as the blind and aging Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade. There are obvious reasons why the performance is memorable (hell, the guy hardly blinks on camera) but the real meat of it comes out during the smaller moments, like his near collapse on Park Avenue or his first interview of the young Charlie Simms, sitting, lecturing from an obfuscated armchair. We are as blind to his existence as ours is to him.

Speaking of Charlie Simms, Chris O’Donnell is charming as the impressionable young bumpkin. Neither a starry eyed fish out of water nor an farmboy who is too dumb to function, Mr. O’Donnell slips into the role of a confused 17 year old perfectly. He provides the perfect looking glass through which to see Lt. Slade’s wild trip through his psyche.

Cinematography is simple and classic: heavy on the warm tones, a generally flat palette with a nice use of haze on wider shots. There is a rather odd wide angle used at the end just fit all those reformatory boys onto the screen. Editing is better than we think. There is a great deal of talking in this film, and at over 150 minutes the pace between the cuts must keep our attention during everyone’s diatribes.

Also of note: Philip Seymour Hoffman as the smarmy George Willis. With only limited screen time, the young Mr. Hoffman manages to spin out a great little character. Watching him try to manipulate the school’s disciplinary committee while his father breathes down on him is really something to behold. Bradley Whitford also offers up his weasley best midway through.

Great? Nah. Watch it? When it comes on TV, check it out.

The story follows two men, Daniel Archer and Solomon Vandy. The first is a white diamond smuggler and self-proclaimed soldier of fortune played by Leonardo DiCaprio. The second, played by Djimon Hounsou, is a black fisherman who becomes entangled in both Sierra Leone’s civil war and the international diamond trade when his village is attacked by rebels. They are both African, and that is the point.

It seems as though Mr. Zwick sets out to make Gone With The Wind on every outing. He finds singular bits of schmaltz amid nations brought to the brink of armageddon and uses them as his macguffin to, well, blow a bunch of shit up and teach us all a lesson by the end of the pummeling. If ever this tactic works, it works best in Blood Diamond. Most of where this film stands apart is in the actind. Mr. DiCaprio and Mr. Hounsou bring a great deal of heart to the table. Archer as the cold hearted cynic who, surprise, lightens up a bit by the end, and Vandy as the loving man-child who dreams for a simpler world, where he could live in peace with his family.

My favorite moments in this film is a scene where Archer must pretend to be a journalist and Vandy must pose as his cameraman so that they may get a free ride towards the giant diamond around which the film centers. Bear in mind, at the point, Vandy has lost his family, his home, and he has very litttle to gain by finding the diamond anyhow. Still, he pulls Archer aside and yells at him “I cannot do this!” He is referring to lying. The scene is both heart-warming and heart breaking, but in the end I found myself chuckling. The film would be better with more of this, but that is all we get.

I absolutely recommend giving this one a viewing if you haven’t yet.

If anything has proven consistent over the last decade of “independent” film, it’s that you’ve got to start with the less-clever-than-it-lets-on cold-blooded-killers-who-are-actually-like-regular-people semi-offensive-but-never-subversive black comedy before you move on to bigger and brighter things. And so, not missing a step of his destiny, Martin McDonagh, of Oscar-winning Six Shooter fame, gives us this forgettable speck.

In the end, I liked this movie far more than I expected (I had to sit through the trailer all year). Two hit men are put on leave after a shooting goes wrong, and something veiled as comedy ensues. Once we realize (SPOILER) that Mr. Farrell’s character, Ray, accidentaly shot a child on their last hit, the film finally picks up steam. This plot point also allows the leading Irishman to take advantage of his one platonic asseet, those huge frickin’ eyebrows. The bounce and quicker above his sockets letting us know that someone is home inside. Oh, I kid. He is serviceable in this role, but oddly enough, the further away his characters get from his native Ireland, the more I like them. 

Ralph Fiennes shows up later as the pissed-as-shit boss, Harry, with a rock solid conscience, for an assassin at least. It’s unfortunate that he isn’t given enough breathing room to make his humor really stick. He is dead-on hilarous in this role, but is seems Mr. McDonagh was more concerned with getting the jokes he wrote into the film than the ones that were so naturally available with a delectable talent like Mr. Fiennes behind the wheel.

I have completely left out Brendan Gleeson’s performance as Ken, the more experienced hitman sent with Ray to Bruges after the hit. His steady hand help keeps the other noise of the film in check. He might be a bit more forgettable than the other two polar ends of the assasin spectrum, but if we could pick one man to aspire to be in this film, no doubt most of the sane among us would pick Ken.

And how did it look? Meh, I would have liked to see some detail in the sky, uhhhhh once. And the camera movememnets were hardly consisteny, especially during the film’s snoozefest of a beginning. Not memorable, but hey, I still saw their faces.