SUMMARY
An office full of real estate salesmen are told by a corporate lead, Blake played by Alec Baldwin, that everybody but the top two salesmen will be fired at week’s end. Only one of them, Richard Roma played by Al Pacino, has had much success recently – the others, convinced that the leads they’ve been given are no good, focus entirely on getting the “Glengarry Glen Ross” lead cards which have a lot more promise. Feeling strapped for cash and desperate, one of the salesmen, Shelley Levene played by Jack Lemmon, ends up stealing the leads and selling them to a competitor, only to accidentally then give himself up to his boss, John Williams played by Kevin Spacey, and the cops.
THE BIZ SPIN
This movie is about a group of desperate and sad salesmen. Through the movie, you only seen one successful sale (which is actually rescinded by the end of the movie) – it’s done over drinks, and the salesman, played by Al Pacnio, spends a LONG time building trust before ever even broaching the sale. There’s probably a good lesson in there on how to sell…. Otherwise, the majority of the movie follows angry and frustrated sellers all complaining a lot and failing to close any deals.
HOW YOU MIGHT RECOGNIZE THIS MOVIE
The cast and Alec Baldwin’s speech (or at least a couple of quotes from it) are the only recognizable thing about this movie – no iconic imagery or scenes otherwise.
NOTABLE CAST
Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey
WHY I LIKE IT FOR BUSINESS
This movie wasn’t particularly enjoyable – most of the time was men either complaining or pontificating. I don’t normally measure movies this way, but it certainly would not have passed the Bechdel Test… That said, there were some very good sales lines right at the beginning of the movie, and the only near-successful sale was made after a serious schmooze-session in a bar. So, you could probably take something away from that.
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