HBO's Phil Spector.

HBO is proving to be very good for Al Pacino. In 2010 he made You Don't Know Jack, and wiped away all memory of the  mediocre work he had done in the previous few years. And now he has done the same with Phil Spector; gone is the haunting sight of him flogging Sky Broadband and slumming it in dreadful Adam Sandler films. 

Written and directed by David Mamet, Phil Spector tells the story of the legendary record producer's first trail for murder. But we do not see it from Spector's perspective (try saying that five times) but from his defence attorney Linda Kenney Baden  a first rate Helen Mirren). We see her belief in his innocence as she gets to know the, eccentric would be selling him short, faded genius. But as she gets deeper into his dark world her health seems to be dragged down with it.  

Phil Spector is about one woman's efforts to free her client, so David Mamet doesn't try to show us both sides of the story, I thought the victim Lana Clarkson got quite a rough ride in the film. But this wasn't about the whole trial this was the relationship between Linda Kenney Baden and Phil Spector, and David Mamet went for American Gothic all the way. When Spector showed his attorney through his mansion it was pure Sunset Boulevard. But, although Helen Mirren had more screen time, it was Al Pacino's show. As Phil Spector we got all his brilliance (even down to the wigs). In lesser hands the character could have come off as cartoonish. But we not only felt  sympathy, but also got the  madness, epic ego, and the tragic  consequences of faded fame and lost genius; Pacino captured it all.

The only problem with Phil Spector was that it left you wanting more, so as problems go that's not a bad one. Now perhaps HBO could go knocking on Robert De Niro's door.

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