[the truth]

These 2 new york italian/american, often gangster, thespian heavyweights have always been compared and contrasted for 40 odd years

Same era, similar background, same new york method acting school , both specialize in playing unconventional maverick anti-heroes etc

so who is the greatest?

It seems to me despite being from similar backgrounds etc Theyre very different, pacino seems more chatty bubbly, deniro is a deep dark melancholic mystery of a man who has delved into more different roles.

Funnily enough the new generation may think of deniro as the straight man in the massive money spinning comedies like meet the parents trilogy , analyse this and that....the older heads know he was the biggest method acting heavyweight in the world for decades. He became a world class boxer, he became a top saxophone player, he learnt everything a catholic preacher knows, he drove taxis in new york for 6 months for taxi driver, (everyone thought hed lost it lol) he studied and lived in a mental institute for parkinsons disease for weeks for awakenings, studied the vegas betting strip for casino, he played a deluded stand up comic in king of comedy, he studied the vietnam war for years for deer hunter , Jackknife and played many gangsters in between etc

as for pacino, well hes perhaps not as physically versatile as deniro , he has the charisma of 20 men and hes still a genius. hes played shakespeare with aplomb, hes played bent cops, straight cops, idealistic lawyers, lady killers, drug dealers, illegal immigrants, blind ex army colonels, the devil himself (as did deniro) bent hollywood producers, egomaniac money men, hes played the Godfather and the bottom in the food chain in donnie brasco with equal class.

They both starred in the epic godfather 2, but finally worked together in the superb cops and robbers movie , heat.

what I love most about these 2 men and what the world always misses when evaluating men. Is that they are devoid of ego. They dress like bums who dont want to be noticed, deniro played a strok victim and hobbled round new york on a zimmer frame for weeks, mocked and unrecongisable in shabby clothes. why? because these men are all about the work. in that work they seek to find the truth. not the cliches we read in magazines.

Both are profoundly sincere artsis, both men seem most at home in the big apple in their natural habitat, surrounded by the hustle and bustle the manic creative energy of the streets and close to real working class people.

I cant begin to tell you how many hours of entertainment these legends have given me.

But who is the greatest?