Caffeinated Clint
By Clint Morris
I want to kill someone. I want to press my cold hands against their thick neck and squeeze until something pops. I want to hear their last gasp. I want them to suffer real pain…. Just like I did.
”Righteous Kill” – nothing Righteous about it. If you’re going to pay Robert De Niro and Al Pacino a shitload of cash to reunite for the screen – they did the sensational “Heat” together in 1996, and both appeared in “The Godfather Part II”, albeit not in any of the same scenes – you don’t coax them into a D-grade serial killer-thriller that’s devoid of any real characters, drive or plot. You just don’t. It’s a sin.
But it’s bad enough that De Niro and Pacino went for it in the first place. Do they really need the cash? What on earth would spur them to waste such a momentous occasion – like reuniting for the screen! – on something so sour like this direct-to-dvd worthy piece of shit! It’s an absolute mystery. Were they both held at gun point? Of the two, Pacino should’ve known better because he’d just worked with the same director – Jon Avnet – on another film… another bad film… that went direct-to-DVD (something Pacino wouldn’t be used to seeing). But De Niro probably saw “88 Minutes” too – and yet he’s still here.,,,stripped off and ready for his whipping alongside his old friend.
One of the year’s most anticipated films turns out to be not only of the year’s most disappointing film… but possibly one of the most insipidly bad films of the last decade. Remember how flat and bummed you felt walking out of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”? Times that feeling by 5. You’ll be so numb after “Righteous Kill” that someone could kick you smack in the goolies and you won’t near even feel it.
It’s not the fact that it’s an independent film, with only a $60 million dollar budget (considerably less than they had to throw around on Michael Mann’s “Heat”), it’s the sheer fact that it’s bad. Read bad. Not only are De Niro and Pacino terribly miscast, but they’ve got nothing to do here – their characters have no motivation, and for the most part, are just hot props to dress a very-fake-looking NY backdrop with.
De Niro and Pacino play cops. Street cops. Brian Dennehy plays their disgruntled boss. Now does anyone see the problem here? The two vets of gangster cinema are too old to be playing street detectives! In the real world, or even a better movie, they’d be teaching at the Academy… or be sitting behind the boss’s desk. They wouldn’t still be on the streets, dressed in their leather jackets with their hair a mess with some form of stylish glue, taking down the bad guys. That’s something the De Niro and Pacino of the ‘80s would’ve been more appropriate for. And as for Dennehy? The man is 70 plus! Would he not have retired by now? Nothing sits right about this film at all.
The film is about the hunt for a serial killer. And from the moment the film begins we know who it is. It’s such a dumb and clear twist.
De Niro and Pacino play ‘Turk’ and ‘Rooster’, the two NY coppers on the case to find the man behind the murders. As all the victims are scumbags, someone puts two and two together and comes to the conclusion that it’s a cop doing the killing. The film starts with De Niro’s character reading a grainy confession – stressing how many people he has killed – into a video tape. That’s a red-herring is it? Shit.
Joining De Niro and Pacino in the film are – besides Dennehy, who has shit all to do – Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson as a drug dealer named Spider, and John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg as two younger cops assigned to help Turk and Rooster track down the killer. Carla Gugino is the lucky lass chosen to play De Niro’s [much-younger] lover, a fellow cop who likes it rough. Yuck!
This film is an absolute mess. There’s nothing here to like at all – well, besides the fact that it’s good to see the boys back on screen together. It’s just a friggin shambles.
Someone find me a copy of “Heat” on DVD, quick! I need to erase this turd from my memory instantly!
“Righteous Kill” is enough to drive a man to drink.
