10 Most Over-the-Top Al Pacino Performances, Ranked (2024)

For more than 50 years now, Al Pacino has remained one of the best and most exciting actors not just of his generation, but of all time. Though his breakout role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather gave him the chance to impress with a quietly intense performance, he eventually gained a reputation for hamming it up on screen, looking like he was having a blast, and in turn being a blast to watch.

Not all his roles involve scenery chewing or copious amounts of swearing and yelling, but some of his most famous and well-beloved movies do feature Pacino going big, and getting loud. The following arguably rank as his most over-the-top performances, but they’re generally over-the-top in a good way. He’s amazing in most of these movies, and is the sort of actor who shows there’s genuine skill and an overall art to delivering grand and showy performances.

10 'And Justice for All' (1979)

Arthur Kirkland

Emotions tend to run high when it comes to the courtroom drama genre, and so when you couple a movie centering on a trial with Al Pacino in a starring role, things are inevitably going to get heated. This is the case for And Justice for All, which sees Pacino playing a lawyer who’s more or less forced into defending a client he knows is guilty, which challenges his sense of ethics.

And Justice for All doesn’t see Pacino in full-on shouty mode for its entire runtime, but the film does build and push its central character further and further, which eventually results in a famous outburst. Pacino’s character yelling: “You're out of order! You're out of order! The whole trial is out of order!” is the most well-known part of the film, so And Justice for All is worth mentioning here for that part alone.

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9 'The Irishman' (2019)

Jimmy Hoffa

Al Pacino gets to work with a range of emotions throughout The Irishman, portraying the real-life Jimmy Hoffa in a movie that’s certainly long enough to give him various opportunities to shine. That’s also to say that it’s not a film where Pacino is consistently bombastic, but he does get many of the film’s best lines, and certainly gets to be animated enough at certain points to make an impression.

Hoffa is shown to be a charismatic and somewhat larger-than-life figure, but he needs to be, given his passion is what draws others to him and his ferocity is what makes him an effective (perhaps too effective for some) union leader. Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci turn in somewhat subtler performances, providing a nice contrast to Pacino; all three are great, and all give refreshingly different performances from the others, too.

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8 'Dog Day Afternoon' (1975)

Sonny Wortzik

There’s a natural amount of tension found within Dog Day Afternoon, perhaps comparably so to the high-intensity And Justice for All. Dog Day Afternoon is also something of a crime/drama film, but Pacino plays a bank robber out of his depths here, instead of a lawyer, with most of the movie showcasing the aftermath of a heist gone wrong; one that ends up attracting heavy media attention.

Unfolding not quite in real-time, but still in a fairly short window of time, Dog Day Afternoon is continually nerve-wracking, sweat-drenched, and uneasy, and Al Pacino is more than up to the task of adding to such feelings with his jittery and high-strung performance. He’s excellent throughout, and effectively showy when he needs to be. In contrast, John Cazale (who appeared alongside Pacino in the first two Godfather movies) also impresses as the other robber wrapped up in the whole situation, though his role is a much quieter one.

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7 'Any Given Sunday' (1999)

Tony D'Amato

Oliver Stone doesn’t tend to enjoy subtlety, so him directing Al Pacino should be a match made in heaven. Any Given Sunday shows this is kind of the case; it’s not one of Pacino’s best films, but could be considered underrated, as though it’s a bit bloated and uneven, it does work here and there as a high-energy (and sometimes surprisingly brutal) sports movie.

Pacino plays a coach who’s faced with challenges in his life, given he’s getting older, and he’s finding his job to be increasingly difficult. He goes through a good deal emotionally, and Al Pacino gets to convey it all in his typically effective and oftentimes loud way. He doesn’t hold much back throughout Any Given Sunday, but as a few soon-to-be-mentioned films show, the man can very much go even bigger.

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6 'Glengarry Glen Ross' (1992)

Ricky Roma

In Glengarry Glen Ross, Al Pacino is just one part of an impressive ensemble cast, but he easily makes enough of an impression for the film to be considered one of his best. Narratively, it focuses on a group of men working in the real estate business, and the cutthroat competition that comes about when they’re told that after a certain amount of time, all but two of them are going to be fired.

What begins as a drama soon starts to feel even more high-stakes and gripping, almost to the point where Glengarry Glen Ross functions as something like a thriller. All the actors going big here have more than enough reason to, given the pressure most of the characters are put under, and it’s the perfect sort of movie for showcasing how passionate and intense Pacino – in particular – can get as an actor.

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5 'Scent of a Woman' (1992)

Frank Slade

Released the same year as Glengarry Glen Ross, Scent of a Woman was the movie that finally allowed Al Pacino to win a very much overdue Academy Award (and his only one to date). It was a movie that gave him a rather dramatic character to play, but he clearly did it well, and it’s kind of great to see awards given to actors who aren’t afraid to throw aside subtlety for the right role.

Scent of a Woman sees Pacino playing a blind U.S. Army officer who’s looked after by a young student over Thanksgiving, with the two clashing at first, but gradually opening up to each other as they get to know each other. It’s all very straightforward and perhaps a little sappy, but it ends up working thanks to the strength of the acting, and Pacino sure is entertaining, playing a bombastic character who does become more restrained with his emotions as he opens up to the young man serving as his temporary carer.

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4 'Dick Tracy' (1990)

Big Boy Caprice

Dick Tracy is an entertaining superhero movie that feels quite far removed (in a good way) from the sorts of movies associated with the genre in more recent times. It’s stylish, wild, and over-the-top not just in presentation, but also when it comes to the story being told and the characters it features, many of whom are cartoonish and – at least when it comes to the villains – somewhat grotesque.

Al Pacino’s character, Big Boy Caprice, exemplifies this well, as he’s the central villain of Dick Tracy and looks like he’s having a ton of fun in a silly yet exceedingly fun-to-watch performance. He fits the world of the film perfectly, and Pacino matches the energy and vibrancy of everything around him with a compellingly bizarre and borderline bonkers performance.

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3 'Heat' (1995)

Vincent Hanna

Standing as perhaps Michael Mann’s best film, Heat is an ambitious crime epic, telling a straightforward story on a massive scale, and having some all-time great action sequences contained within. It’s also well-loved for starring both Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, marking the first time they shared the screen together in a movie (it doesn’t happen a lot throughout Heat, but it’s absorbing when it does happen).

De Niro’s character is a cool and calculated master thief, while Pacino plays a hot-headed detective who’s frequently fiery and absolutely loves to shout. If anything, Al Pacino might come close to overdoing it at some points in Heat, but at least he makes Vincent Hanna a memorable character with his performance. Additionally, his behavior does make more sense after Pacino’s admittance that his character was supposed to be high on cocaine for much of the movie.

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2 'The Devil's Advocate' (1997)

John Milton

There’s a fun contrast between the two lead actors in The Devil’s Advocate, because Keanu Reeves is sometimes accused of under-acting (if that’s a term… doing the opposite of over-acting), while Al Pacino is known for pushing things with his acting style, at least a good deal of the time. The two actors both fit well into this supernatural thriller, fitting their respective – and very different – characters well.

The Devil’s Advocate is, broadly speaking, about a law firm with a dark secret, and going into detail about why Pacino’s character acts the way he does would perhaps be giving away too much. In any event, he has a good reason for going big and getting hammy, and the fiery nature of his performance helps The Devil’s Advocate stay entertaining in its back half, because it’s otherwise a movie that feels perhaps a tad too long (falling just a few minutes shy of 2.5 hours).

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1 'Scarface' (1983)

Tony Montana

Updating an already classic gangster film and making it bigger, more excessive, and wilder in just about every way, 1983’s Scarface is an undeniable classic, and is also home to what’s arguably Al Pacino’s most over-the-top performance. He’s helped out by various people behind the scenes also going full-throttle with their contributions to the film, with an Oliver Stone screenplay, Giorgio Moroder's music, and Brian De Palma’s direction.

Scarface is also a quintessential rise-and-fall story, showing how one small-time criminal came from nothing to run a drug empire… briefly, before everything crumbled down around him, owing to his greed and continual ruthlessness against both friends and foes. It’s a film that’s quite aggressive with its style and overall “80s-ness,” but this works in Scarface’s favor, and Pacino goes so large with his central performance that it should feel like too much, but it just fits, miraculously.

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NEXT: The Most Over-the-Top Jack Nicholson Performances, Ranked