Directed by James Foley
Staring Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey
Released 1992

I first heard of this film though a teacher when I was attending classes at ITT. He introduced this to the class by showing the opening sequence with Alec Baldwin’s character Blake giving a rather forceful “Always Be Closing” speech to the rest of the main cast. The reason he did this was to preface the flash short he did called Glengarry Glen Darth, which was hilarious, especially for a Star Wars fan, but has nothing to do with the rest of this review.

Until that point I had never heard of this film; which is kind of odd as I’m a fan of Harris, Spacey and Pacino. And after having seen the complete film I can say that I’m left with the feeling of having been mind melted.

The film on whole is about a set of real estate sellers who have horrendous leads that they have to cold call and try and sell property to at resort clubs in Florida and Arizona. What they want are the Glengarry leads, which Blake gives to Williamson (Spacey) at the beginning of the film. That’s the long and the short of the film. In the rough hour and a half you’re watching this you get to hear how disgruntled the employees are and what they could be doing or should be doing. And if I say much more I’ll spoil the whole movie. We’ll leave it at Moss (Ed Harris) eventually screwing one of his co-workers. The movie has a nice twist to it, so pay attention.

The script and the acting were amazing and you’re definitely left with a sense of completion when the film is over. Having worked in the sales business before I can honestly say that I really feel for the characters and what they have to do to survive.

I think what I most enjoyed about the movie was that there wasn’t a single female lead in the film. Not one. And that a movie in today’s world can work as well as this one does without the obligatory female lead was nice to see.

Final word: It’s not quite a Z-snap but its not worthy of a Hated It either (maybe I should go back to stars like normal people). It’s a great film, but one that I would definitely recommend that you grab from Netflix or borrow from a friend. See it once; it’s all you’ll need. Oh…and keep the youngsters out of the room as there’s at a hundred instances of a fat f-bomb, if not more.