Pacino stars as the eponymous A.J. Manglehorn, a grumbly locksmith who keeps mostly to himself in the small Central Texas town in which he lives. His work with keys and locks is ironic given his inability to connect with others, which is only one of the film’s many, many symbolic flourishes. Manglehorn is a melancholy sort, a “hopeless romantic”-cum-case of extremely arrested development who is permanently mired in the regrets of the past. He has a grown son, Jacob (Chris Messina), who has made a lot of money in the financial sector and from whom Manglehorn is almost completely estranged, although he does spend time with Jacob’s young daughter. Otherwise, Manglehorn pours all his emotional energy and time into his cat, a fluffy white Persian who at one point must undergo abdominal surgery, and the florid letters he constantly writes to a woman named Clara. We hear portions of these letters in voice-over, which gives us insight into Manglehorn’s troubled inner world and romantic delusions. Clara is a lost love for whom Manglehorn stills pines—the eternally unreachable object of desire—which is why he checks his mailbox each and every day, hoping that she has responded to one of his letters (the buzzing hornet’s nest under the mailbox is yet another symbolic flourish, its continued existence being otherwise inexplicable).

There is one person with whom Manglehorn regularly interacts: Dawn (Holly Hunter), a sweet, middle-aged bank teller who he sees each week when he deposits his check. Dawn, as her name suggests, is upbeat and cheery, and something about her draws Manglehorn out of his shell, even as we still sense his resistance. He is friendly to her at the bank counter, and he casually invites her to a local supper. However, when they go out on a proper date, it turns into an unmitigated disaster as Dawn’s overt attempts at romance are thwarted by Manglehorn’s almost obscene entrapment in the past and unwillingness to let go of what he has lost. Pacino will rightly get a good deal of attention for his role here, as it is duly impressive in its low-key sadness, but the real stand-out is Hunter. Watch carefully during the date scene as her initial enthusiasm and pleasure slowly give way to heartbreak and disappointment. Watching her trying to mask her sinking heart and eventually giving up is positively heart-rending, which makes Manglehorn’s utter obliviousness to the pain he is inflicting both infuriating and pathetic.

That scene aside, most of Manglehorn works only intermittently, with some scenes clicking and others that feel like they are simply treading water. First-time screenwriter Paul Logan clearly develops an interesting character in Manglehorn, but he never seems entirely sure what to do with him. Thus, we get bits and pieces of potential plotlines, not all of which are fully developed: Manglehorn’s budding and then disastrous romance with Dawn, the drama of his cat having to go in for surgery, the tension between him and Jacob, especially when Jacob finds himself in need of a father. There is a strange scene in which Manglehorn accepts an invitation from a friend (Harmony Korine) to get a massage at a tanning salon that is obviously a brothel in disguise, which also has a parallel in Joe, although Manglehorn’s response is quite different. All of these scenes and plotlines bear interest, but they don’t always come together, which may be the point. Manglehorn is—like many of Green’s best films, including George Washington (2000) and All the Real Girls (2003)—about the ebb and flow of life, so it’s not going to follow a neat three-act structure and end with satisfactory closure. However, a little more structure might have helped buttress the film’s ideas and given the characters and their development more support. As is, Manglehorn feels too loose and a bit flat, which is a shame since it’s filled with such good performances and the kernels of a lot of good ideas.

Copyright ©2015 James Kendrick

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