Righteous Kill - Preview & US reaction
Preview by Jack Foley
WHEN it was first announced, the re-pairing of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro for the first time since Heat gave just about every movie fan cause for excitement – especially as it was revealed early on that they’d be spending more time together on-screen.
As the release date drew nearer, however, the excitement seemed to diminish, replaced instead by a sense of trepidation.
Director Jon Avnet was certainly no Michael Mann or Francis Ford Coppola, while his previous film with Al Pacino, 88 Minutes, drew some of the worst reviews of the actor’s career (including Revolution) when released in the States last year.
The reluctance of the distributor to offer too many press screenings also gave cause for concern, particularly as this generally gives rise to a stinker.
But surely, the pairing of two of modern cinema’s greatest actors couldn’t produce a film that terrible, no matter how hard the director tried?
Word from America suggests that while Righteous Kill isn’t lousy, it might well have gone straight to DVD were it not for the presence of its leading duo.
The plot concerns the hunt for a serial killer in New York by two veteran detectives – the highly decorated Turk (De Niro) and Rooster (Pacino). The murders all involve suspected criminals and the police know it’s a serial killer because personalized poems are discovered on each body, an obvious clue to the motive.
Joining the hunt is CSI officer, Karen Corelli (Carla Gugino), who is intrigued as she uncovers the rhythmic elegies placed on each victim, as well as Detectives Perez (John Leguizamo) and Riley (Donnie Wahlberg), who are hoping to solve the case before the old-timers.
Lt. Hingis (Brian Dennehy), their boss, just wants the case solved especially since evidence is pointing towards one of their own, a fellow cop.
View photos from Righteous Kill
Righteous Kill was released in America on Friday, September 12, and drew a fairly underwhelmed response from critics.
The Los Angeles Times, for instance, wrote that “they [Pacino and De Niro] seem comfortable enough in each other’s company on-screen to make you wish there were more scenes that allowed them to just kick back and riff. It’d be a lot more enjoyable than watching the movie strain for clarity – or cleverness”.
While Variety dismissed it as “at once groaningly predictable and needlessly convoluted”.
Rolling Stone lamented that “Righteous Kill, aka The Al and Bob Show, is a cop flick with all the drama of Law and Order: AARP”, while Entertainment Weekly awarded it a D and stated: “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”.
And The Hollywood Reporter felt that it’s “an ordinary cop picture boosted by two charismatic superstars but hindered by its dearth of surprises”.
There were some positives, however. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote that “taken purely on its merits as a psychological thriller, Righteous Kill is probably a two-star film. The third star is there strictly for De Niro and Pacino. Playing off each other, they stir up the ghosts of past greatness”.
And MTV observed that it’s a film of “smothering close-ups, slam-bang montages and sudden, bloody assaults, all sleekly effective”.
E! Online, meanwhile, wrote that “De Niro and Pacino hit every step so perfectly, they make even the standard cop-movie moments shine”.
UK audiences will be able to judge for themselves when the film opens on September 26, 2008.