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Righteous Kill
I don’t know at what age the NYPD retires its homicide detectives, and no one ever comes out and says that Danny Glover line, “I’m getting too old for this shit”, but sexagenarians Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are looking a little long in the tooth here, as partners whose case load starts to shrink when one unconvicted scumbag after another is handily dispatched by a mystery serial killer.
Well, the mystery is a moot point actually, as the movie begins with De Niro’s character announcing to a video camera that he’s the guy. “I’ve been a cop for more than 30 years,” he says. “And in that time I’ve killed 14 people.” Most of them in the last couple of years – and all of them bad guys. Who is this guy? He’s a dedicated cop, a little league coach, a widower with a grown kid in California and a thing going with Karen Corelli (Carla Gugino), a forensics officer with a masochistic streak. He has a short fuse and quotes Dirty Harry approvingly to the shrink they make him see. His colleagues call him Turk. Pacino is Rooster (hah!). He’s the smart one, keeps his cool when Turk loses it and starts pummeling the perps. He retains his sense of humour and stays loyal to his partner even when everyone else is pointing fingers and the evidence is stacking up.
Written by Russell Gewirtz (The Inside Man), Righteous Kill might have had some potential as a noir-ish character piece, a study in disenchantment and the unravelling bond between two old comrades. As directed by Jon (Fried Green Tomatoes) Avnet, it emerges as something almost entirely without merit, a sleazy, gimmicky thriller so hackneyed and contrived the only surprise is that someone thought it was worth committing to celluloid. As a junior detective on the case John Leguizamo makes some effort to honour his costars (and I don’t mean Donnie Wahlberg and 50 Cent), but neither De Niro nor Pacino are exerting themselves on this video-shelf type scenario. Bobby D looks fat and bored, and even Al can’t breathe life into lines like these. There’s a scary gym scene where you wonder if either actor will get through the weightlifting without a coronary, but otherwise this flick is a suspense-free zone. If you can’t figure out where this movie is going within 30 minutes then you’re not the film fan I take you for. Working out all the plot holes and implausible behaviours will take a good deal longer, and was evidently beyond the ken of Messrs Gewirtz and Avnet.
Did I mention the killer leaves behind lines of doggerel with each corpse? They call him the Rambeau killer. Why would he do such a thing? It’s inexplicable and unexplained, completely out of character and an insult to the New York Police Department (in one scene Gugino gingerly extracts the poem from its perch between the buttocks of a defrocked Catholic priest and then hands it to detective Rooster… You’d think he would wear gloves or something for sanitary reasons, if not for forensics. I won’t say more for fear of venturing into spoiler territory, but what a shame that the first time these two great actors share substantial screen time they’re slumming it in a second rate garbage like this. Righteous has nothing to do with it. Tom Charitytom.charty@lovefilm.com 
More information about Righteous Kill » Critics' Reviews
De Niro. Pacino. Together again at last. Well, you can stop salivating right this minute because this first reunion for... read more on www.timeout.com Members' ReviewsReviews Voted Most HelpfulMost Recent Reviews |
Trevor Johnston, Time Out