Sea of Love (1989)

(On Cable TV, January 2020) Prime-era Al Pacino is always a treat, and seeing him at work in a neo-noir thriller like Sea of Love is even better. It was a significant film in his career: the first after a four-year hiatus following a significant box-office bomb, it also set the stage for the grander-than-life hoo-ha Pacino streak that was further developed in his next few movies, lasted for the next ten-fifteen years and is still what we think about when we think about Pacino. As far as narrative goes, Sea of Love is simple, nearly archetypical stuff, what with Pacino playing a cop tracking down a serial killer preying on men posting Lonely Hearts classified ads, and then falling for the primary suspect. Violence and lust, with a bit of an unexpected ending to shake things up. Pacino’s quite good here—not quite as intense as later movies, and slightly forlorn around the edges by looking for love in all the wrong places. Ellen Barkin is surprisingly attractive here—and even looks like Helen Hunt at times. John Goodman is not bad in a supporting role, and there are a few more known names in the roster. While I’ll maintain that the 1990s were a golden age of sorts for mid-scale thrillers, you can see Sea of Love pointing the way, and bridging the gap between the 1980s neo-noir movement (plus the reactionary “killer women” streak of the late 1980s) and the later surge of suspense films. Sea of Love is not the best at anything, but it’s certainly watchable without effort, and as I said—Pacino plus neo-noir is a great mixture.