Righteous Kill

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

I just saw a TV ad for Righteous Kill that said: "De Niro. Pacino. What else do you need to know?"

Well, for starters, that it's a bad movie.

Which is depressing. I'm as big a fan of De Niro and Pacino as anyone. All the talk about them being the two best actors of their generation? I really do buy into that hype. People have accused them of over-acting as the years have stretched on -- Pacino shouting his lines, De Niro phoning it in -- but even their worst is still more entertaining than other actors' best.

They're not the problem in Righteous Kill. It's just depressing that they're in it at all.

When I found out the film was to be directed by Jon Avnet and written by Russell Gewirtz, I didn't think it spelled disaster. Sure, Avnet's other Pacino movie, last April's 88 Minutes, is quite potentially the worst movie of the year -- it's painfully awful in a way Righteous Kill never comes close to -- but if a good script is in the hands of a bad director, I trust it to shine through. And Gewirtz wrote the rock-solid Inside Man, so my spirits were high. This didn't have to be The Godfather, it just had to be another rock-solid cop movie starring two legends.

Unfortunately, Righteous Kill has a screenplay that was nowhere near ready to be shot. I can picture it now: Inside Man becomes a success, Gewirtz's phone starts ringing off the hook, he doesn't have anything to show anybody, so he finally pulls out that crappy cop screenplay he gave up on three years ago. And Avnet, well, he just makes it worse.

For starters, the first twenty minutes or so of the film are nearly incomprehensible. It's some of the worst editing you've ever seen. It plays like an extended movie trailer, except one that doesn't explain the plot. Oh look, a murder. Oh look, De Niro and Pacino are talking about something unrelated. Oh look, isn't that 50 Cent? Wait, what the heck is the plot of this movie?

The plot, as the real trailers explain in much more coherent terms, follows De Niro and Pacino as cops hunting down a serial killer who only seems to be killing bad guys. Early on, though, we see a grainy video of De Niro addressing the camera, in what looks to be a confession of the murders; the film keeps cutting back to him talking periodically. I guess we're supposed to be wondering whether or not he actually is the killer; for my part, I guessed the correct killer was within the first twenty minutes -- yeah, even during all the incomprehensible editing it was pretty obvious who the bad guy was.

Stuff just happens with no rhyme or reason. Carla Gugino, who plays De Niro's love interest, is assaulted by ...