Pacino

Kilmer was pictured with Al Pacino at a live reading of Shakespeare's Live Read of The Merchant Of Venice in 2019, more than two decades after starring together in Heat.

So when Odenkirk was offered the role in this production he jumped at the chance to step into the shoes worn by Jack Lemmon, Alan Alda and Al Pacino.

One reason the show keeps coming back is that there’s plenty of scenery to chew for the top-flight actors — Alda’s co-stars in the 2005 revival included Liev Schreiber and Jeffrey Tambor, while Pacino was joined by Bobby Cannavale and John C. McGinley in 2012.

It was a seismic moment when De Niro and Al Pacino shared the screen for the first time over coffee in Michael Mann’s epic “Heat” and similar-looking scenes are presented here as De Niro faces off against himself, though they don’t carry the same electricity.

Joshua Rothkopf: I must admit that, for me, the concept of “due” took hold early, during the mid-to-late ’80s and early ’90s, when it was a good time to be a revered performer who had never quite gone all the way: Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Al Pacino — the latter, especially.