Al Pacino and Robert De Niro do their best to elevate this dowdy genre exercise, but even these two greats can't resuscitate the film's hackneyed script.
Al Pacino and Robert De Niro do their best to elevate this dowdy genre exercise, but even these two greats can't resuscitate the film's hackneyed script.
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Average Rating: 3.1/5
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Jon Avnet's thriller Righteous Kill stars Al Pacino and Robert De Niro as a pair of Big Apple police officers investigating a series of murders committed by a serial killer. Carla Gugino co-stars as a crime-scene investigator who has romantic ties to De Niro. 50 Cent, Donnie Wahlberg, Brian Dennehy, and John Leguizamo co-star. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
It's not much fun to see these two reduced to Mad TV parodies of themselves. In the right movie, they'd stop coasting on their legends long enough to remind us how they became them.
The worst about Righteous Kill is that there's probably a perfectly acceptable procedural thriller somewhere in the mountain of cliches and stupidity that riddle the film.
Imagine this conversation: A phone call between actor Bob De Niro and director Marty Scorsese. Bobby: Hello, Marty. I've been calling and texting, but you never answer. (Silence) Bobby: I'm talking to you. Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
Pacino. DeNiro. Armed and dangerous. In a cop drama. In NYC. Together. Written by the writer of Inside Man. Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, what could've gone so wrong?
Equally gritty old school crime thriller and flashy seductive post-modern whodunit noir, along with De Niro's off the job kinky rough sex lover forensic babe (Carla Gugino) who likes him to role play criminals in bed, Righteous Kill delivers the goods.
There's nothing righteous about this tired and tiresome good cop/bad cop NYPD procedural from Avnet; in fact, it's pretty much an abomination from the get-go.
Righteous Kill is an average police mystery/thriller, terribly disappointing considering the two acting giants who star in it. I always like Carla Guginio and John Lequizamo too, but they don't add much here. So, all these actors have done impressive work before, but director Jon Avnet doesn't get much done here. There
is some intensity, but its all clichéd and formulaic. Really, is this the best everyone could do? I enjoyed watching Pacino and DeNiro (Rooster and Turk?) together, but RK doesn't compare to Heat, much less Godfather II. This is essentially a bigger budget episode of Law and Order.
September 23, 2011
Clintus Maximus
Super Reviewer
ok...a pair of seasoned cops, Turk (Robert De Niro) and Rooster (Al Pacino) are on the case when a serial killer with a vigillante streak starts bumping off bad guys in New York City.They team up with younger detectives Perez and Riley and assisted by crime scene specilist Karen Corelli they work to uncover the killers
identity with little more to go on than a poem left as a calling card at the scene of each crime.
has an obvious twist~!
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