Kino Lorber has released a 4K upgrade of Al Pacino’s 1989 comeback film, Sea of Love.

Pacino made his film debut in a minor role in 1969’s Me, Natalie starring Patty Duke. He then starred opposite Kitty Wynn (The Exorcist) in 1981’s The Panic in Needle Park in which they played co-dependent heroin addicts. His next role would be as Michael in The Godfather which made him one of the biggest stars of the 1970s.

Nominated for Oscars four years in a row for The Godfather, Serpico, The Godfather Part II, and Dog Day Afternoon, he suffered a setback with 1975’s poorly received Bobby Deerfield and 1979’s mediocre And Justice for All which nevertheless earned him a fifth Oscar nomination.

1980’s controversial Cruising and 1983’s box-office hit Scarface brought him renewed success but 1985’s universally trounced Revolution torpedoed his career for the foreseeable future. Four years later he came roaring back with Sea of Love.

Directed by Harold Becker (The Onion Field), the film gave Pacino his third NYC detective role following Serpico and Cruising. Like Sydney Pollack’s 1975 film, Three Days of the Condor, which was as much about the scintillating romance between Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway, Pacino’s chemistry with Ellen Barkin as the primary suspect in a series of grisly murders gives the film a gravitas that makes it much more than just another thriller. Both films use the gritty streets of New York as background almost as effectively as John Schlesinger did with 1969’s Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy.

With strong supporting work by the entire cast from third-billed John Goodman as Pacino’s assigned partner on the case to one-scene dynamos Barbara Baxley (Nashville) as a neighbor who discovers the first body and Patricia Barry (Dear Heart) as a needy older woman, the film bristles with one memorable scene after another.

Pacino, whose last Oscar nomination was ten years earlier, received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance but was left out of contention for the Oscar which went to Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot in a close race with Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July and Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy.

Back to stay, Pacino was expected to receive two Oscar nominations the following year, Best actor for The Godfather Part III and Best Supporting Actor for Dick Tracy, but ended up with just one for the latter. Then two years after that, he was once again in the conversation for two Oscar nominations, Best Actor for Scent of a Woman and Best Supporting Actor for Glengarry Glen Ross. This time he was nominated for both and won his first and only Oscar to date for Scent of a Woman. His career has continued, never far from the top, and with 2019’s The Irishman, he earned his ninth Oscar nomination thus far.

The Kino Lorber release features two audio commentaries, one from director Becker from a previous release and a brand-new one from film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson. Included on the accompanying standard Blu-ray is the featurette, The Creation of Sea of Love

Also newly released from Kino Lorber is a Blu-ray upgrade of 1957’s The Lonely Man, a western starring Jack Palance as a gunslinger coming to terms with his infamous past and uncertain future as did Alan Ladd in Shane and Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.

Palance, who was Marlon Brando’s understudy in Broadway’s A Streetcar Named Desire, made his film debut as a vicious killer in 1950’s Panic in the Streets. Within three years he had two Oscar nominations under his belt for playing Joan Crawford’s nefarious husband in Sudden Fear and Alan Ladd’s nemesis in Shane.

With starring roles in a wide range of films from biblical epics such as The Silver Chalice to contemporary dramas such as The Big Knife to one of the era’s most critically acclaimed war films (Attack!), The Lonely Man was his first western since Shane.

Starring opposite Palance was Anthony Perkins as his estranged son. Straight from his Oscar-nominated role as Gary Cooper’s son in Friendly Persuasion, this was the second of three of Perkins’ 1957 films. The others were as baseball player Jimmy Piersall in Fear Strikes Out and The Tin Star, an equally high profile western opposite Henry Fonda as his father figure albeit not his biological one.

The Lonely Man was directed by Henry Levin who then directed two other 1957 films, Bernardine and April Love, both starring Pat Boone.

The supporting cast was led by a rogues’ gallery of bad guys played by Neville Brand (Stalag 17), Robert Middleton (A Big Hand for the Little Lady), Elisha Cook, Jr. (The Maltese Falcon), Claude Akins (Inherit the Wind), and Lee Van Cleef (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Playing the woman who brings father and son together is Elaine Aiken in her only major screen role. She later became a renown New York acting teacher under Lee Strasberg at the Actor’s Studio before founding her own studio.

Palance mostly played supporting roles for the rest of his career, eventually winning an Oscar for 1991’s City Slickers.

Perkins became a major star with 1960’s Psycho, a role he reprised three times in subsequent films.

Levin later directed such films as 1959’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1960’s Where the Boys Are, 1962’s The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, and 1963’s If a Man Answers.

Happy viewing.