When you first saw the trailer for John Avnet’s introspective buddy cop film Righteous Kill, did you honestly hope for fantastic dialogue, an award-winning plot, and heart-pounding action scenes? Probably not, and for that reason alone it had almost no chance of failing. It successfully delivers exactly what it promises – a movie starring De Niro and Pacino, even if we had to wait for the twilight of their careers to see it.
It’s been 13 years since these two giants shared a few short scenes in Heat, and another 11 years before that since they both appeared in The Godfather: Part II, in which they never shared a scene at all. To see them side by side for an entire feature could be the main reason you were interested in Righteous Kill.
There are few scenes that don’t feature Turk (De Niro) and Rooster (Pacino). two old cops who crack jokes as they kick asses and try to solve crimes. Interestingly, they aren’t portrayed as fantastic cops or great detectives, just seasoned veterans who’ve been together forever.
When the two maverick cops watch a child-murderer go free, Turk forms a plan to put the criminal away for good. While Rooster initially tries to dissuade him from the crusade, he keeps his partner’s secret for years.
At this point, things get complicated (for the viewer even more than the characters). Turk and Rooster are on a case of a serial killer who leaves poetry at his victims’ crime scenes. The victims are all criminals, and Detectives Perez (John Leguizamo) and Riley (Donnie Wahlberg) are convinced that only a cop would have access to them all, and they take their suspicions to Lieutenant Hingis (Brian Dennehy).
Meanwhile, Officer Corelli (Carla Gugino), Turk’s masochistic girlfriend, is becoming more and more curious about what’s really happening. And all of these scenes in the present are constantly interrupted by non-sequential scenes of Turk, in a black and white video, confessing to the serial killings and explaining why they were necessary.
The movie resembles Lethal Weapon and Showtime’s Dexter combined in strange harmony. A buddy cop movie that vaguely poses some philosophical questions about the nature of right and wrong. And there’s potential for a great, out of the ordinary story that showcases those kind of questions. Instead, it wraps up with a safe but tired gimmick that threatens to rip the story apart.
In the end, you won’t stay in your seat for dialogue like, “you pick up a check sometime and then I’ll believe in miracles” or for action that’s made up of a few people being shot. You might even get annoyed or frustrated by the long, complicated road the storyline takes or the clichés it visits along the way.
But if the reason you’re going to see Righteous Kill is because it stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, well, it does. Have fun.
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