Righteous Kill (DVD)

When I found out Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro would be making another movie together I was pretty excited. Their last collaboration, Michael Mann’s cops and robbers thriller “Heat”, is one of my favorite movies of all time. Not to mention the impressive film resumes of both actors, although lately poor script selection seems to have been getting the upperhand on them.  Still, I was eager to watch this movie having missed it in theaters.

In the movie, Pacino and DeNiro play veteran detectives who are also partners. A vigilante serial killer has been targeting criminals who have managed to either slip through the legal cracks or evade getting caught altogether. 

There are conflicting viewpoints as to whether the killer is actually doing the police a favor by cleaning up the streets.  Eventually the evidence leads the detectives to believe the killer is a cop, and the majority of the movie is spent determining who the killer is. While the premise of the film and the two big name leads offer so much potential for a great movie, sadly Righteous Kill falls a bit short of greatness and even dips into mediocrity.  The ideas behind the story are solid, but their execution is something else. It seems that the director was too focused on convincing the viewer of who the killer was that they unintentionally (at least I hope it was unintentionally) point to who the true killer is. Its a bit hard to describe without giving too much away about the plot, but anyone who has seen it should understand.

Pacino and Deniro are good at trying to salvage the film, but you can’t help but expect more from them while watching them together on screen. There is some decent banter between the two of them, as is probably expected, but you begin to get the feeling that director Jon Avnet could have gotten so much more out of them. Even their characters were a bit stereotypical for them, as DeNiro is cast as the hotheaded cop who is always pissed off and Pacino contrasts him as  his cool but intense partner.  The supporting cast is great and they are one of the bright spots of the film. John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg play detectives in the same precinct who are helping with the investigation.  Surprisingly, these two make for a more interesting duo in this film than the leads. Carla Gugino does a good job as DeNiro’s love interest/fellow cop. She’s a strong female lead with enough toughness and smarts to hold her own with the other screen heavyweights.

Overall Righteous Kill is worth a rental just to see some of the great performances in the film. While Pacino and DeNiro are good in the movie, it is not on par with their better work. The story, while seemingly simple, is told in a convoluted manner that adds a bit more mystery than there actually is, which strangely helps the film in an odd way by raising enough doubt as to not make every twist so painfully obvious.  In the end though, the movie had the potential to be so much more than what it turned out to be.