You Don't Know Jack

After spending more than two increasingly dispiriting hours with Pacino's raspy eccentric, I still didn't know a lot more about Kevorkian than I had going in.

Even as stars Al Pacino, Susan Sarandon and Brenda Vaccaro dim their wattage with clumsy Michigan accents, bad wigs and dowdy clothes, a compelling story about Kevorkian's advocacy for euthanasia emerges.

There are many, many haunting scenes in HBO's docudrama You Don't Know Jack.

Should make for a fascinating and nicely tangled story. The trouble was that the programme turned it into a straight fight between goodies and baddies.

Kevorkian boasts that he can "go weeks without food, like Gandhi." Pacino, by contrast, clearly recognizes the big, juicy meal laid out in front of him by this peculiar character, and it's a pleasure watching him greedily consume it.

Pacino spends most of the two-plus hours of "Jack" being a distraction in his own movie.

By the end of the film, viewers still may not be sure what makes Jack tick. But you'll have a better sense of Al, one of the premier actors of our time.

A biography of "Dr. Death" may seem like an odd choice for a TV movie, but this is a very good, thought-provoking film. And Pacino and the rest of the cast are great.

A vein of messianic righteousness can be detected below the surface, but mostly this Kevorkian is delightful-which doesn't seem quite right. It's an ingenious performance, though.

Viewers may not know Jack at the beginning of the film, but they have a somewhat better sense of this enigmatic character by the end.