Righteous Kill (2008, Jon Avnet)

Right away, there's a novelty factor to Righteous Kill; namely, Pacino and De Niro join forces for the first time since Heat, and this time ALL their scenes are together! Unfortunately, Jon Avnet is no Michael Mann, and Righteous Kill, against all odds, is an excruciatingly bad movie. It's a cop movie, essentially-- it's stipulated in their contracts, I believe, that Pacino and De Niro can't share celluloid together without playing cops or gangsters, or one of each-- but a severely deficient one, boasting more in common tonally with an Ashley Judd-in-peril thriller than Heat director Mann's crime-drama ouvre.

To scroll filmographies and go movie-for-movie, De Niro has a better success rate than Pacino, and he's typically a better actor-- Pacino's built his empire on simply being Pacino, prone to exuberant scene-chewing and distinct Pacinoisms, while young De Niro delivers some emotional firepower unseen on screen before (except maybe Brando) or after. But De Niro's been phoning it in lately (did anyone SEE 15 Minutes? I mean, REALLY), and Pacino runs rings around him in this one, having loads more fun, relaxing a lot more, and (oddly) not resorting to Pacinoisms. Bobby D is the one guilty of shtick here-- he makes that face he makes a lot, you know, the one people make when they're doing De Niro impressions, and vacillates between Grumpy and Pissed. He's textbook latter-day De Niro grizzled cop. Pacino tends to light up the screen in his role, and he's easily the best thing about this movie. John Leguizamo and Donny Wahlberg acquit themselves nicely, too, as a pair of skeptical officers probing the same murders Al and Bobby are working-- Donny brings some of the sardonic detective edge he brought to his surprisingly entertaining Dead Silence role, and Leguizamo (often a highlight of whatever he's in) has some great moments as a hot-headed wrench in the works. Brian Dennehy and Carla Gugino sleepwalk their way through roles that appear to have been written with qualifications like "a Brian Dennehy type" and so forth.

No, with all the principals mostly showing up and doing their thing just fine, the only real problem is with the script. It seems unsure of what it wants to be-- the action isn't really action, the suspense never actually suspenseful. The twist isn't even a real twist-- I mean, on paper, I suppose it is, but if a movie twists and we saw it coming the entire time, does it really twist? Righteous Kill is ostensibly a drama, a character study, but then that doesn't work either, since all the characters are rather one-note. I suppose you could make the argument that it's a think-piece, what with its preoccupation with the moral questions related to vigilante justice, but really, the only thing it makes you think about is Pacino's gravity-defying Phil Spector 'do. Well, that, and "has it *really* been that long since Godfather Part II?"

Basically, this is the most by-the-number cop picture in years. Maybe ever, really-- it's that standard-issue. It's almost as though halfway through writing it, someone got the call that Pacino and De Niro were in, and realized that they could have the two profess their love for each other, traipse off to Massachusetts to get married, and retire peacefully on a ranch somewhere, raising ducklings, and there was no need to polish any further. Of course, that actually sounds like an entertaining movie to me, so what do I know?

Well, I know that with, I dunno, Robert Patrick and Michael Beihn starring, this thing would've limped straight to DVD, bypassing theaters entirely on the Blockbuster Expressway. I can only hope that De Niro and Pacino will collaborate again, and I hope they show a little more choosiness next time out. I'd even watch 'em be partners again-- um, COP partners-- if the script was any good. Just do us a favor, guys, and be choosy. It's cool. Seriously, you guys were responsible for Taxi Driver and Dog Day Afternoon. You've got some leeway here.

Oh, I almost forgot 50 Cent, credited here as Curtis Jackson. He's horrific. He couldn't even play himself competently in Get Rich or Die Tryin', and here he marble-mouths his way through the most basic of lines. Seriously, you hired 50 Cent? Was Ludacris above this material?

Rating: *1/2 (out of five)