Yes, Al Pacino is an amazing actor. But Scent of a Woman? Seriously? Come on, you want to win, but you don’t want to win like that. This is a particularly obvious example of the Academy’s nasty little habit of neglecting actors when they turn in amazing performances, then trying to make up for it by reward their later (usually subpar) work.
The Academy missed the boat on The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Scarface, and a handful of other films. Oops. So here’s an obligatory Oscar for your over the top performance in Scent of a Woman. But that’s not even the worst part. When Al Pacino won that Oscar, he beat out Denzel Washington in Malcolm X, in his career-defining and far more deserving performance. Which meant that the Academy, in turn, had to make it up to Denzel with an Oscar for Training Day. And so the vicious cycle continues.
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