Pacino Buoys ‘Sea of Love’ at Box Office

Any lingering doubts about the box-office drawing power of Al Pacino appear to have been dispelled with a record-setting $10-million opening weekend for the police thriller “Sea of Love.”

“Sea of Love,” in which Pacino plays a New York cop in love with a woman he thinks may be a serial killer, shattered the old fall opening record of $8 million set by Paul Hogan and “ ‘Crocodile’ Dundee” in 1986.

The film’s blockbuster opening gave Universal the distinction of being only the third studio in the last decade to simultaneously have the three top-grossing movies in the market. “Sea of Love” was followed on the weekend chart by “Uncle Buck” ($4.1 million), which had been No. 1 for the last month, and “Parenthood” ($3.7 million), which had been first or second since it opened seven weeks ago.

Combined, Universal’s trio accounted for nearly half of all the movie tickets sold in the United States over the weekend.

“Sea of Love’s” performance in what is traditionally one of the slowest periods of the year greatly boosts the film career of Pacino, who has been absent from the screen since the 1985 “Revolution” and has not had a critical or commercial hit since “. . . And Justice for All” in 1979.

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