Critics Consensus: It might soar on Al Pacino's performance more than the drama itself, but what a performance it is -- big, bold, occasionally over-the-top, and finally giving the Academy pause to award the star his first Oscar.
The colonel sits alone in his room, drinking and nursing his self-pity. He is a mean, angry, sarcastic man. We sense he has always been lonely, but never lonelier than now, when he is trapped inside blindness. He lost his sight late in life, through his own stupidity, and now he gets drunk and waits for victims. There is hope for him, however, because of two fugitive threads in his personality: He is a romantic. And he possesses a grudging sense of humor.
