Review of You Don't Know Jack

Al Pacino has done it again, not only fully inhabiting a real-life character we knew from TV reports but also investing his portrayal with late-life bravado, amusing eccentricity and stubbornness, and a caring and sensitivity towards the sick that must be present in order to understand the man once dubbed by the media as "Doctor Death," Jack Kevorkian. In the early 1990s, Kevorkian, a retired pathologist born to Armenian immigrant parents and situated in Michigan, assists in the suicide of a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, a woman who was lucid long enough to express her wish to die with dignity. A proponent on the ethics of euthanasia, the doctor--with the help of his housemate, his loyal sister, his lawyer (whom his sister discovered in a TV commercial) and a right-to-die advocate--would go on to fight endless battles against the legal system in order to keep assisting terminally-ill patients in their right to die, despite being surrounded himself by the deaths of colleagues and family. Although lengthy, this HBO presentation is masterfully written by Adam Mazer, who based his teleplay in part on Neal Nicol and Harry Wylie's book, "Between the Dying and the Dead", and beautifully directed by Barry Levinson, who shows a keen eye for small details, but isn't fussy about them (he doesn't linger over his points, which is in keeping with the personality of his story's champion). Terrific supporting performances by John Goodman, Brenda Vaccaro, Danny Huston and Susan Sarandon compliment Pacino's sterling work, while the film manages to be a testament to the human heart as well as an evocative document of our times.