Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey

Cramped, bilious and falsely billed as "a story for everyone who works for a living," as if it were a working-class story, this film was adapted by overrated playwright David Mamet from his Pulitzer-prizewinning play.

Here is a typical dialogue sequence: "You're expletived!" "Well, I'll be expletived." "You've got the class of an expletiving fly!"

Stranded in this jungle of subliteracy (there is hardly a moment of eloquence), even the surpassingly skilled stars of the film are left with little to communicate. Lemmon, Pacino, Harris and Arkin are all salesmen in a high-pressure Brooklyn real estate sales operation. Spacey (Working Girl) is the office manager.

The salesmen are a clichéd cross-section. Lemmon, in Save the Tiger mode, is the office's aging star salesman; Pacino is the new sales leader, and Arkin is a hopeless blunderer, while the preternaturally calm Harris is a quietly bitter plotter.

Nobody ever explains who or what "Glengarry Glen Ross" is. No character is named Ross. Guesswork would suggest it is the name of a condo development, but Mamet and director James Foley (After Dark, My Sweet) sure aren't telling. While they do try to involve the audience in the salesmen's bitter competition to land the best leads to customers, these guys are all essentially con men unscrupulously peddling worthless property, so there is nobody to root for, except for the customers who filled out ad coupons in good faith seeking further information.

What's left is two hours of splendid actors swearing at each other—an expletiving farce. (R)