An ignoble genre exercise darkens the twilight of two legendary careers.
A couple of weeks back we ran a preview of Righteous Kill with our fingers firmly crossed, hoping that veteran screen lions Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino might transcend the limitations of their recent lackluster work and give us crime film fans something we’ve wanted since their brief screen pairing in Heat thirteen years ago: a full-on teaming of the two tough guys who’ve been synonymous with urban drama for thirty-plus years. At least, the previews indicated it migh deliver a quality neo-noir mystery that, if not great cinema, might cruise along as a guilty pleasure. But Righteous Kill is not that movie. It is not even a particularly good movie, but it is a movie we have seen, in miscellaneous parts or in whole, many times before.
DeNiro and Pacino play two veteran homicide detectives who, some years previous, planted evidence to send a wrongly-acquitted child killer to prison. In the present day, a string of executions targeting known criminals (always called “psychopaths” and “scumbags,” in vintage potboiler lingo) are turning up dead. Through the film, DeNiro gives the audience a videotaped confession about how he committed the various killings. Except – and here’s the part you’ve seen many, many times – he may not be the real killer after all. The revelation and aftermath of the true killer’s identity are the stuff of which screenplays’ third acts are made.
While Heat was a sprawling saga imbued of subtly deeper meanings than its genre forms readily indicated, with Righteous Kill what you see is what you get. Inelegantly directed by Jon Avnet, who led Pacino through the guilty pleasure mire earlier this year with 88 Minutes, there’s a parade of predictable events leading up to the resolution. In fact Russell Gewirtz’s (Inside Man) script at times seems desperate not to miss any plot contortions that have already been explored. Carla Gugino’s crime lab detective likes rough sex. There’s a pretty young defense attorney (Alicia Silverstone lookalike Trilby Glover) who bonds with DeNiro after a shootout. Leguizamo and his partner (Donnie Wahlberg) are younger cops who just want to close the case by the book. DeNiro and Pacino are weary but resolute and committed to the cop way of life, and to each other, and to hell with anyone who thinks otherwise.
You talkin to me? DeNiro, Pacino phone it in
The derivation from other, better movies grows so intense that at one point DeNiro’s narration gives up and just quotes Dirty Harry Callahan. And (for me, anyway) that’s when the signal flares can no longer be ignored. It’s one thing for a film to be aware of its influences; it’s an admission of desperation when one film asks another for help getting its point across. That DeNiro spent the 1970s making exponentially better films than any of Dirty Harry’s seamy exploits only highlights the script’s stark faults.
Troubled scripts are often saved by remarkable performances. DeNiro and Pacino have each accomplished as much many times in their storied careers (Cape Fear and Sea of Love, for examples). Here, however, they both appear too indifferent to muster the simmering intensity that shaped their earlier work. As noted elsewhere, DeNiro gives a default performance of squinty eyes and lumbering rage; Pacino is all kinetic movement and rapid talk. Gugino, Wahlberg, and Leguizamo seem bored with their parts, as if they’ve played them fifty times already (and in fact they may have). Brian Dennehy, a silvered lion of an actor himself, is only given dialogue like “you’re going down” as the detectives’ garrulous lieutenant. Rapper 50 Cent mumbles his way through a largely superfluous role as a drug dealing nightclub owner. One bright spot: Melissa Leo (21 Grams) appears in a single scene to demonstrate to Wahlberg, Leguizamo, et al what inhabiting a character looks like.
So come give me a hug: Fiddy, actors
What a twisted pile of wasted opportunity. DeNiro and Pacino have done better, are still better than this route exercise in b-grade (which is not the same as a B-movie. This film can only aspire to B-movie status) filmmaking. It’s possible too that all is not lost – both actors are still just compelling enough that fans can hope for a more memorable effort still to come. But after waiting thirteen years for this, will anyone else still care if they try again? Bad movies happen, and good stars make bad films. But to make one this lazy just isn’t right – or righteous.
- Michael Kabel
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September 13, 2008 at 12:30 am |
Not to inadvertently fuel the hype machine, but I couldn’t help but think of Watchmen while sitting through the perfunctory rough sex bits between DeNiro and Gugino. Here’s the actress playing the first Silk Spectre with the actor that Alan Moore himself once envisioned as the Comedian.
That besides, the resolution for Gugino’s character was simply offensive. See folks, all trauma survivors need to heal is to go to a little league game. Don’t get me wrong, it’s because I’m a fan of Gugino as an actress that I was so disappointed. It wasn’t as blatantly insulting or creepy as her role in Sin City, but then it’s pretty much impossible to outdo Frank Miller when it comes to misogyny. (The man called Batgirl the c-word, for chrissakes. Batgirl!)
September 13, 2008 at 3:53 pm |
Exactly what I had been expecting – word by word. Didn’t have the chance to see it yet but unless I plan the whole thing as a night out with a couple of friends and this is the flick that we see before a couple of drinks, I highly doubt it that I’ll make the trip to the theater for this one.
It’s depressing though. Normally you wouldn’t mind a bad film but one with such good actors is a new level of atrocity.