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.