Misconduct

Between Alice Eve’s flatliner performance and Al Pacino’s worst accent ever (Jesus Christ! Would all these Yankee thespian geezers stop trying to do Southern accents once and for all!?! I’m looking at you, too, De Niro!) I have almost nothing good to say about “Misconduct” (2016). (Malin Akerman occasionally sticks out as the crazy ex-girlfriend – that’s it.) Josh Duhamel is a lawyer in over his head. Eve is his wife. Pacino, his boss. There’s some sorta film noiry, sorta Fatal Attractiony, sorta Grishamy plot twisty stuff, but it’s mostly a mess. Evil CEO type Anthony Hopkins patiently endures it all.

 

100 words on actors and Southern accents

I would like to thank Kenneth Branagh for restoring my faith in good actors’ abilities to execute a Southern accent. I just got done watching “The Gingerbread Man” (which is from like 20 years ago, but it was new to me). Branagh sounds exactly like a Savannah attorney should sound like. Nails it. Last week, I saw “Misconduct,” in which Al Pacino half-asses some kind of Brooklyn-by-way-of-the-Bayou drawl to such an awful extent it becomes a distraction. I don’t know why he even bothered. Or why someone who is supposed to be such a good actor couldn’t have practiced a little.