In the 1970s, the decade Al Pacino broke into movies, he starred in eight films. He was Oscar nominated for five of them, all box office hits. That’s about as good a decade as an actor can have in motion pictures.
The 1980s were a completely different story for Pacino. Cruising, Author! Author!, and Revolution were all met with lukewarm critical reception and underwhelming box office receipts. Thinking his career was over, Pacino took a four-year break from movies in the second half of the 80s before returning with 1989’s Sea of Love.
But Al came back big time in the 1990s, making more than a dozen movies. Any time he appeared in a film, it had instant Oscar buzz (whether the movie lived up to it or not). While his acting style may have been a little more pronounced than it was in the 70s, he could still deliver the goods.
Here are the movies Pacino made in the 90s* ranked from worst to best…
12. City Hall (1996)
A classic “why isn’t this better” movie, City Hall is an urban mystery featuring peak John Cusack in the lead role and Al Pacino as a larger-than-life New York City mayor. It also has a stacked supporting cast—including Bridget Fonda, David Paymer, and Danny Aiello. And yet almost nothing that happens in this movie raises the heart rate even a blip. While Pacino is good here, oscillating between low-key and loud (which fits the character’s private/public persona), Cusack is unfortunately saddled with the kind of Louisiana accent that Pacino loves to devour (and fall in and out of).
11. Frankie & Johnny (1991)
It says something about Pacino’s 90s that this and City Hall are the lowest movies on the list. They’re far from terrible. Even if this romantic drama from Pretty Woman director Gary Marshall doesn’t light the world on fire, who wouldn’t want to spend two hours with Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer (a Scarface reunion)? Based on a play about the burgeoning romance between a cook and a waitress at a cafe, the main problem with the movie is that Pacino’s character is so relentless in his romantic pursuit of Pfeiffer that it quickly crosses the line into creepy.
10. Dick Tracy (1990)
Released in theaters the summer after Batman, Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy couldn’t quite fill the shoes of that comic-book blockbuster. But it was a fun throwback to 1940s pictures with a loaded cast, including Madonna as a lounge singer named Breathless Mahoney (showing the most cleavage in a movie marketed to kids since Jessica Rabbit) and Pacino covered from head to toe in prosthetics as the leader of the bad guys, Big Boy Caprice. Along with having a blast in the role, Pacino was awarded his first Oscar nomination in a decade.
9. Scent of a Woman (1992)
Say what you will about Pacino going loud and “hoo-aying” his way to an Oscar as the blind and horny Colonel Frank Slade, it’s a fully committed and highly entertaining character that completely levels up this movie. Is it as good a performance as Denzel Washington in Malcolm X? Hell no. Is it as good as any of Pacino’s 1970s Oscar-nominated roles? Not a chance. But it’s a magnificent piece of work that possibly only Pacino could’ve pulled off. And how many Oscar winners feature a scene where a blind man screams at a group of prep school boys: “If I were the man I was five years ago, I’d take a FLAME THROWER TO THIS PLACE!”?
8. Carlito’s Way (1993)
Carlito’s Way is a tricky one. Half of it is great and half of it is objectively hilarious. Such is the nature of a Brian DePalma film. A lot of the comedy comes from Pacino’s Puerto Rican accent, which comes and goes and has shades of Scent of a Woman’s Frank Slade (though in fairness he does sound a lot like the author of the book the movie was based on, Judge Edwin Torres). The voiceover narration is particularly chuckle-worthy. But there are also moments in this that really hum, including the subway chase at the end. And Pacino and Sean Penn—as a dorky coked-up lawyer high on his little taste of power—are also a blast to watch together.
7. The Godfather III (1990)
The Godfather and its first sequel are among the best movies ever made. The Godfather III is not in the same league (probably not even the same ballpark). But that doesn’t mean it’s not good. It’s actually really good, with some great scenes and set pieces. But it doesn’t all work. And one of the key things that doesn’t work is Pacino’s hair. Pacino himself has acknowledged this. Despite giving a very good performance (it’s fairly shocking he wasn’t Oscar nominated), that hair is always right there—a symbol of a movie that has hints of the greatness that came before but also never feels quite right.
6. Any Given Sunday (1999)
Oliver Stone was up to some shit in the 90s. Having honed the experimental style he started working toward with The Doors and Born on the Fourth of July, Stone took it to the next level with movies like Natural Born Killers and Any Given Sunday. No one else would make a football movie with inserts of storms, old gladiator movies, and a ripped-out eyeball lying on the turf. This movie is over-the-top, packed with well-cast stars (from Dennis Quaid as the veteran quarterback and Jamie Foxx as the rookie to Jim Brown as an assistant coach and James Woods as a slimy team physician), and features a boiling Pacino performance as an old-school head coach. It also features one of the great sports movie speeches. Fun fact: Pacino would play another football coach in the 2018 HBO movie Paterno.
5. Heat (1995)
I’m not as high on Michael Mann’s Heat as the cluster of cinephiles who consider it a flawless five-star classic. But that’s not to say it doesn’t have some amazing moments (the downtown L.A. shootout, the Pacino-DeNiro diner scene). It also has some truly batshit-insane Pacino line deliveries (“she’s got a GREAT ASS!”, “you can get killed WALKING YOUR DOGGIE”). The story goes there was an abandoned subplot where Pacino’s Lt. Vincent Hanna was doing regular bumps of cocaine. While this explains some of Pacino’s choices, I prefer to think Lt. Hanna just loves a SUDDEN YELL!
4. Donnie Brasco (1997)
In many ways Brasco is the inverse of Heat. If Michael Mann’s film is all bombast, Mike Newell’s Donnie Brasco is an internal sigh. Instead of criminal masterminds, these guys are working stiffs plodding through another day. Pacino flips to the other side of the coin to play a criminal here who screws up big time when he befriends Johnny Depp’s undercover title character. There’s a sweetness and sadness to Pacino as a tired old goodfella facing the fact he hit his low criminal ceiling long ago.
3. The Devil’s Advocate (1997)
Pacino went big a lot in the 90s, but this is the best (and most appropriate) version of his ability to play to the back row. As a lecherous lawyer who is literally the root of all evil, Pacino smiles and cackles like he’s having the time of his life. Meanwhile an oddly high caliber cast—Keanu Reeves (doing a southern accent), Charlize Theron, Craig T. Nelson—doing a legal thriller meets Rosemary’s Baby keeps things both grounded and hysterical. By the time we get to the end and all hell breaks loose, the purest form of 90s Pacino has been completely and joyously unleashed.
2. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
As of 2026, only 12 individuals have been nominated for two Oscars in acting categories in the same year. Pacino was one of them for his work in 1992, scoring a Best Actor nomination for Scent of a Woman and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross. And while he may have won the gold man for Scent of a Woman, Glengarry is by far his best performance of the year (and maybe one of his best performances of all time—full stop). Chomping on David Mamet’s textured and sublime dialogue, Pacino is cool as a cucumber as Richard Roma, a top-of-the-bottom-of-the-barrel salesman. There may be no greater joy than watching him repeatedly and aggressively berate Kevin Spacey’s pencil-pushing office manager.
1. The Insider (1999)
While many people consider Heat to be Mann and Pacino’s 90s masterpiece, it’s actually The Insider—a journalism movie about an executive (played by a very non-Gladiator Russell Crowe) who decides to blow the whistle on Big Tobacco to 60 Minutes. Pacino, in one of his best exasperated performances since the 70s, plays the CBS News producer fighting to get his story on the air as corporate forces continually conspire to squash it. The acting in this is off the chains, from Crowe and Pacino to stellar supporting turns from Christopher Plummer (as Mike Wallace) and Bruce McGill. Despite receiving seven Oscar nominations—including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Russell Crowe (Pacino wasn’t nominated)—this movie remains somewhat slept on. It’s both the best movie Mann ever made and Pacino’s best of a very good decade.
*Three credits listed on Pacino’s IMDB have been left off this list—1990’s The Local Stigmatic, 1995’s Two Bits, and 1996’s Looking for Richard. The first two were excluded because I haven’t seen them. The last title didn’t quite fit as an apples-to-apples comparison with the others since it’s a documentary directed by Pacino.
Heat belongs in the top 3
Great list. I am glad we agree about the Insider. It's one of his greatest performances and IMHO Manns finest work. Check out my essay on this masterpiece: https://djraghavan.substack.com/p/of-men-and-their-craft-the-beauty?r=2shf0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web