Al Pacino Movies

Want to know the best Al Pacino movies?  How about the worst Al Pacino movies?  Curious about Al Pacino’s box office grosses or which Al Pacino movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Al Pacino movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well, you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Al Pacino is considered one of the greatest actors ever. Pacino has received nine Oscar® nominations and eighteen Golden Globe® nominations over his movie career. He won his only Oscar® for 1992’s Scent of a Woman. From 1972-1975 Pacino was Oscar® nominated for an amazing four years in a row. He has picked up three Golden Globe® wins ….. 1973’s Serpico and Scent of a WomanHis IMDb page shows over 60 acting credits since 1968. This page will rank Al Pacino movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos, and movies that were not released in theaters were not included in the rankings.

Image by: Schmoedown Entertainment Network

Image by: Schmoedown Entertainment Network

Al Pacino Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Al Pacino Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies any way you want.

  • Sort Al Pacino movies by co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort Al Pacino movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Al Pacino movies by domestic box office rank by year
  • Sort Al Pacino movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Al Pacino movie received.
  • Sort Al Pacino movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Al Pacino Adjusted World Wide Box Office Grosses

Al Pacino in 1975's Dog Day Afternoon

Al Pacino in 1975’s Dog Day Afternoon

 Possibly Interesting Facts About Al Pacino

1. Alfredo James Pacino was born in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City on April 25, 1940.  In his teenage years, Pacino was known as “Sonny” to his friends. He had ambitions to become a baseball player and was also nicknamed “The Actor”.

2. Al Pacino made his Broadway debut in 1969‘s Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?  It closed after 39 performances on March 29, 1969, but Pacino received rave reviews and won the Tony Award®.

3. Al Pacino was rejected repeatedly by studio heads and frequently referred to as “that midget Pacino” by producers of The Godfather (1972) who did not want him for the role of Michael Corleone , but Francis Ford Coppola fought for him. This film was shot briskly because both the director and the leading actor were in constant fear of being fired. Ironically, this turned out to be a breakthrough for both.

4. Al Pacino had been friends with John Cazale since they were teenagers. They starred together in Dog Day Afternoon (1975), The Godfather: Part II (1974) and The Godfather (1972).  Cazale’s only other two movies, The Deer Hunter and The Conversation, joined his three Pacino movies as Best Picture Oscar® nominated movies.  Making Cazale a perfect 5 for 5 when looking at Best Pictures.  Three of the movies won the Best Picture Oscar®.

5. Al Pacino Is one of nine actors to have won the Triple Crown of Acting (an Oscar®, Emmy® and Tony®); the others in chronological order are Thomas Mitchell, Melvyn Douglas, Paul Scofield, Jack Albertson, Jason Robards, Jeremy Irons, Geoffrey Rush and Christopher Plummer.

Check out Al Pacino’s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.

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63 thoughts on “Al Pacino Movies

  1. “Attica!…. Attica!”

    A nice update Bruce. Pacino is one of my favorite actors, 80 years old? Whoa!

    I don’t think I’ve ever posted a tally on Pacino at the UMR let’s see… I’ve seen 27 of the 51 films on the chart, less than I thought.

    Favorites include – The Godfather trilogy, Scarface, Carlito’s Way, Donnie Brasco, Dick Tracy, Dog Day Afternoon, Heat, Serpico, Sea of Love, The Devil’s Advocate, Glengarry Glen Ross and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

    Wow impressive selection of titles and I’ve missed a few top rated too. 🙂

    The Godfather was a massive success and it was downhill from there, box office-wise.

    Vote Up!

  2. Happy Birthday Al Pacino. Added some new photos. Added in 4 new to the page Pacino movies. Added in some Possibly Interesting Facts about Pacino. Edited some of the text which was almost a decade old. So basically….check out our newly remodel Al Pacino page.

  3. Hi all!! Thanks for sharing!! I agreed and was glad to hear about others’ comments about the ’70s era of his superb performances (not Bobby Dearfield)…. Top movies I admires of Al were: The Godfather; The Godfather part 2; Dog Day Afternoon; Serpico; Caritlo’s Way; Dick Tracy; ….And Justice For All; Heat; ….. I often wish that Academy Awards would give both Jack Nicholson for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (actual winner) AND Al Pacino for Dog Day Afternoon as a “TIE” for 1975 movies. Al should have won for Serpico instead of Jack Lemmon….oh well…I want to mention that Al is awesome in several TV movies/mini-series which he show variety of characters than movies after 1980’s…..

    1. Hey Dann 4…..another great comment. Glad you like the feedback that gets shared on our Pacino page. As I wrote at the top of the page…I am not a huge Pacino fan….but I watch almost every movie he makes. Of the movies listed above…I have seen 33 of them. Good points on Al’s Oscar snubs of the 1970s.

      That reminds me of the only funny moment in the truly horrible Jack and Jill. In that movie, Adam Sandler’s Jill breaks Pacino’s Oscar….and then says.

      Jill Sadelstein: [after breaking his Oscar] Oh, my God! I’m so sorry! I am sure you have others, though.

      Al Pacino: Uh, you’d think it, but, uh, oddly enough, I don’t.

      Good stuff…hope to hear from you again.

  4. PRE GODFATHER: “At school we called him Little Al”.
    POST GODFATHER: “He’s Big Al now!”
    1 Hi STEVE. IMDB seems to agree with that statement as it regards Pacino as the 4th Greatest Actor of All Time immediately below his Godfather buddies Mumbles and DeNiro. In fact Al seemed to me to considerably have changed his acting style as his career progressed. In the 1972 Godfather he underplays Michael Corelone as a usually quiet spoken measured thinker whereas by the time when we get to for example Scent of a Woman, Sea of Love and Glengarry Glen Ross his characters have become often loud rip-roaring extroverts that Lee J Cobb might have envied.

    2 For my money these are some of the very best posters in your Pacino video: 88 mins, Cruising, Revolution, Author Author, Danny Collins, Any Given Sunday, Scent of a Woman and Sea of Love. However I have to give you special praise for your poster for Godfather 1972 as that poster is unique among all the posters that I personally have come across for this movie. Also for some reason I was drawn to Simone though it has sparse pictorial.

    3 Pleasing stills to my eyes were those from The Recruit, Ocean’s 13, Dick Tracy [exceptionally chilling!] Carlito’s Way, Serpico and Heat and the one of Al sitting with his ‘father’ whose back was to us! Others in the cast of Ocean’s 13 said they felt that Al was initially nervous in appearing alongside the long-standing and therefore more settled and experienced members of the Danny Ocean ensemble like Clooney and Pitt.

    4 You and WH agree on 3 of Pacino’s Top – Godpop 1 & 2 and Dog Day Afternoon. Bruce has Glengarry Glen Ross and The Insider as 4 and 5 whereas you pick Scarface and Heat. I an ambivalent about the others but The Insider is my favourite Pacino movie apart from GF 1 and 2 so I support Bruce including Insider in his 5. Your video overall was a 97% rated hit in my eyes. Great stuff!

    1. Hello Bob, thanks for the review, rating, comment, observation and comparison, much appreciated. Happy you enjoyed the pictorial content.

      I was a big Pacino fan in my youth, more so than Brando or De Niro, not so much now. I agree that he started to shout a lot from about the mid 90s onwards. It did get annoying. At least he didn’t star in a series of inane and embarrassing comedies like his pal De Niro. He did appear in an Adam Sandler comedy which I have mercifully not seen, I think Bruce warned me off it.

      I confess to boosting Scarface’s score a little, it’s arguably Pacino’s most popular and iconic film [Bob gasps in astonishment] yep. The Godfather films were hugely successful in their time and highly respected too, but Scarface evolved into something else, it’s the Star Wars of the gangster genre and gets watched over and over and over ad infinitum, people know every line to every scene. If I hadn’t included it in the top 5 I would have been lynched.

      Four Pacino films get 10 out of 10 from my sources – The Insider, Glengarry Glen Ross, Godfather 1 and 2. Seven scored 9 out of 10 including Heat and Dog Day Afternoon. Eight scored 8 out of 10 including Scarface and Carlito’s Way.

      Pacino on Scarface – “The most popular movie I’ve ever made is Scarface (1983), all over the world. It’s amazing to me. It’s wonderful. We sometimes forget that it was Oliver Stone who wrote it. He is a political creature, and I think that is an undercurrent in the movie. And the combination of him and Brian De Palma made for this kind of fusion or explosion. It worked.”

      Pacino on Brando – “There’s no doubt every time I see Brando that I’m looking at a great actor. Whether he’s doing great acting or not, you’re seeing somebody who is in the tradition of a great actor. What he does with it, that’s something else, but he’s got it all. The talent, the instrument is there, that’s why he has endured. I remember when I first saw On the Waterfront. I had to see it again, right there. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t leave the theater. I had never seen the likes of it. I couldn’t believe it.”

      Pacino on De Niro – “I remember seeing things that Bob had done in the past, and very recent times, and have been taken with the work so much that I even wrote to him about it. Some of his great work — which is plenty — I was staggered by the subtlety of his portrayal and the warmth, which is what we often talk about with Bob among us actors who admire him so. It is the warmth and the way he approaches things.”

      1. Looking at Bruce’s critics chart, Scarface isn’t in the top 5 but it has an even higher score than I gave it. Which makes me feel better about upping it’s score on my chart. 🙂

        1. HI STEVE

          Nothing strange here as Bruce probably initially gave Scarface a high score but then decided that Hirsch wouldn’t have made it a Top 5 hit. I’m afraid I can’t mediate as I detested the film – sorry

      2. HI AGAIN STEVE

        1 Modern ranking lists of great actors tend to lean towards contemporary stars with Brando and Chaplin usually being the exception. So we will normally get the top half dozen or so being cited as Nicholson/Brando/DeNiro/Pacino/Chaplin/Day-Lewis with largely just the order of merit changing from one survey to another and I see that Streep now is ranked above Katie Hep by IMDB.

        2 I must confess that I often long for Joel to be around nowadays to sort matters out and crown THE definitive Greatest male and female artistic performers of all time. A lot of acting water has passed under the bridge since Hirsch’s days so don’t heed any half-baked c*** that the Work Horse cites about Joel’s outdated opinions in the matter – though I think we can all guess who would NOT be the Male No 1 on any Hirschhorn latter days list!

        3 The one thing that Pacino didn’t like about Mr M was his craze for “mooning”. Brit Terence Stamp on Mr M when they made the 1978 Superman together “Brash and brilliant. We got on famously and in fact he brought to the set with him two women whom he had just finished romancing and invited me to take them off his hands.” I’m working on a response to your DeNiro video so I’l let you have some comments on Robert in that post.

  5. Awesome tribute to one of my all-time favorites. My only beef? Glengarry Glenn Ross is ranked to low and Oceans 13 ranked to high.

    1. Hey Pacino Fan. Oceans Thirteen was a huge box office hit….so it got pretty high in the rankings….while Glen….pretty much died at the box office….but I agree it is a good movie.

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