Kitty Winn comes to New York from Indiana and falls in with junkie Al Pacino. They live in a crummy flat in "Needle Park," the neighborhood in which all the heroin users hang out, score, and use. Winn falls for Pacino and they live happily together. The problem is that Pacino is reduced to engaging in all sorts of ratty enterprises by his habit. He shows no desire to kick it and it's costing $200 a day. It doesn't help when Winn, out of curiosity, begins shooting up too and is soon pumping more than $80 a day into her inner elbow. Inept at ordinary jobs, she begins hooking. She rats on Pacino, he winds up in the slams, and she waits for him.
It's a well-executed but sad movie. One of the reasons the movie is sad is that all the performers, the ones we know from their more recent appearances, look some damned YOUNG. You would never recognize Paul Sorvino in a small part, for instance. Pacino has the dark eyelashes and soulful eyes of a thinker but the appetites of someone consumed by stimulus hunger. He's the kind of guy who doesn't mind turning his girl out on the street but doesn't want her balling their friends.
Kitty Winn is not startlingly attractive in a Hollywood fashion and, as far as I'm concerned, it adds to her winsome charm. She has a pleasantly attractive face, suggesting vulnerability, a quality it sheds as she sinks deeper into her addiction, hair face pales, and her hair becomes long and greasy.
She delivers a fine performance too. She's very good at projecting uncertainty. And Pacino is his youthful, almost adolescent, self -- animated and dumb. Well, not exactly stupid but with limited horizons. They take a trip to the country where they fantasize about leading a straight life but if it's a genuine dream for Winn, it's just a momentary self-indulgent whimsy for Pacino. He insists on getting high before they go back to the city so their roller coasters can be in synch.
Effective location shooting, set dressing, makeups, and wardrobe too. No musical score. Added to that is the fact that this is almost a kind of tribal ethnography, a study of the addict's life from his point of view. The junkie isn't the pathetic wretch of "Hatful of Rain," taunted and teased by his evil supplier. And it's not the glamorous high-trade business we see in "Traffic" or the International Big Business of "The French Connection." Just a couple of sad lowlifes who will do anything for a fix, even steal from, or send each other to jail. It's a dead end life which Pacino and Winn wind up facing with a shrug of resignation.
It's a well-executed but sad movie. One of the reasons the movie is sad is that all the performers, the ones we know from their more recent appearances, look some damned YOUNG. You would never recognize Paul Sorvino in a small part, for instance. Pacino has the dark eyelashes and soulful eyes of a thinker but the appetites of someone consumed by stimulus hunger. He's the kind of guy who doesn't mind turning his girl out on the street but doesn't want her balling their friends.
Kitty Winn is not startlingly attractive in a Hollywood fashion and, as far as I'm concerned, it adds to her winsome charm. She has a pleasantly attractive face, suggesting vulnerability, a quality it sheds as she sinks deeper into her addiction, hair face pales, and her hair becomes long and greasy.
She delivers a fine performance too. She's very good at projecting uncertainty. And Pacino is his youthful, almost adolescent, self -- animated and dumb. Well, not exactly stupid but with limited horizons. They take a trip to the country where they fantasize about leading a straight life but if it's a genuine dream for Winn, it's just a momentary self-indulgent whimsy for Pacino. He insists on getting high before they go back to the city so their roller coasters can be in synch.
Effective location shooting, set dressing, makeups, and wardrobe too. No musical score. Added to that is the fact that this is almost a kind of tribal ethnography, a study of the addict's life from his point of view. The junkie isn't the pathetic wretch of "Hatful of Rain," taunted and teased by his evil supplier. And it's not the glamorous high-trade business we see in "Traffic" or the International Big Business of "The French Connection." Just a couple of sad lowlifes who will do anything for a fix, even steal from, or send each other to jail. It's a dead end life which Pacino and Winn wind up facing with a shrug of resignation.