Elite prep school student Charlie weekend “caretakes” for spending money a cantankerous, self-destructive army Lt. Col. (Al Pacino) whose meteoric rise to almost general was halted by a drunken game of chicken with a hand grenade that left him blind. Charlie needs money to go home to Oregon for Christmas; the colonel’s family who quarters uncle Frank needs someone to look after him while they are away for a weekend. Unbeknownst to Charlie (Chris O’Donnell) the colonel has planned a one way junket to NYC for a last, blowout of the finest accommodations, chauffeured limo, meals and experiences he can while sotted on “John Daniels” (Charlie: Don’t you mean Jack Daniels? Lt. Col Frank Slade: He may be Jack to you son, but when you've known him as long as I have... that's a joke.) There are parallel plots wonderfully woven around Charlie’s dilemma of being scapegoated for a prep school incident that may get him expelled and the colonel’s certainty that as a blind soldier he may as well go in a self-induced blaze of glory in the Big Apple. The interplay of an uncertain teenage boy with a big heart and an old warrior with no war to fight anymore puts the two in wonderful juxtaposition of master-steward bonding, a tense standoff, and an effusive charming of a woman on a dance floor whose catalyst was the colonel’s recognition of the scent she was wearing. A drop-in family Thanksgiving ‘recon’ mission to the colonel’s brother’s house is particularly edgy when nephew Randy attempts to shame his uncle in front of Charlie. Pacino’s range is staggering as he goes from self-pity to rage to charming to mentoring and finally to waging one last war on Charlie’s behalf. [We find that along the way both of them saves the other.] Philip Seymour Hoffman has a small but pivotal role as the prep school kid you most want to punch in the face which he plays brilliantly. The setting for the movie’s Baird School is upstate New York’s Emma Willard School, a spectacular setting overall and particularly for the climactic disciplinary committee standoff that is the final scene. Scene Of A Woman touches on themes that need to be sacred: manhood, authentic emotions, conflict, teenage uncertainty (and irrationality), self-medicating, self-pity, salvation, and, well, the scent of a woman (bravo, Gabrielle Anwar and Frances Conroy.)