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‘Righteous Kill' not worth your righteous buck

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I have grown weary of Al Pacino. I know I will probably ruffle a few feathers with that statement, but he has, of late especially, made some truly deplorable film choices and to my mind, he has been playing the same character for far too long. But I suppose a man has to work. Robert De Niro has not worn as thin to me, but together in a transparent, absurd script by Russell Gerwitz, these Academy Award winning actors offer nothing to impress and even if they did, they cannot rise above a poorly penned tale, “Righteous Kill.”

The movie opens with a montage, featuring De Niro's Turk and Pacino's Rooster (a nickname I am sure he earned because of his strange hair style, but that is just catty speculation on my part) shooting at targets, pumping iron, arguing with an umpire and even playing chess Bobby Fischer-style against multiple opponents in New York's Central Park. They are veteran New York police detectives, but they are also aged and seem too old for the parts they play. They do address the issue of age several times and it's believable enough, and I am sure aging detectives do exist, but I had trouble liking these two guys for the parts. Now when they were paired in “Godfather: Part II” and “Heat” I bought in and the films and performances are classic, but there is nothing righteous about the rightly R-rated “Righteous Kill.”

A serial killer who targets acquitted criminals is loose in the city, and an early video of Turk confessing to the murders makes him the prime suspect from the standpoint of the audience. It was the Bobby Fischer chess scene early on in the film that tipped me to the real story, but I will not offer a spoiler. Filmmaker Jon Avnet paints an all too transparent tale for my liking and I was instantly bored. I realize others in the theatre are not as astute as I - I do see hundreds of films after all - but my goodness, a freight train in a living room has more subtly.

Rooster and Turk are aided in their investigation (as we flashback) by two junior officers, Det. Simon Perez (John Leguizamo) and Det. Ted Riley (Donny Wahlberg) and there is no love lost between the officers, particularly Turk and Perez. Leguizamo and Wahlberg make a better partnership than do the senior actors, at least in this, but only slightly. Perez's obvious disdain for Turk makes for some intense chest-butting, but still the script is so lame and uninteresting that all the testosterone-driven pissing contests in the world cannot make up for weak dialogue and inane storytelling.

Writer Gerwitz, to be fair, offers a few good lines for his leads - a few references to “The Brady Bunch” and some one line digs at age work, but he also falls short by giving us a killer who leaves badly penned poems at his crime scenes. One such literary masterpiece goes like this:

The old man who the children trust. Unable to control his lust. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Boy, that's right up there with the likes of “Roses are red and violets are blue” and “I am rubber and you are glueŠ.”

There is truly nothing memorable about “Righteous Kill,” unless we count Pacino's hair.

It doesn't help the film that De Niro and Pacino, at 65 and 68 respectively, seem to have lost much of their physical presence and I found it difficult to imagine them lifting weights and taking long jogs, but I guess anything it possible. They seem more to be just going through the motions. Their performances lack the heart and passion we recognize in them, but old doesn't mean dead, and certainly there are very spry oldsters (I have several in the aqua-fit class (a.k.a. water aerobics) that I teach at the Y, every Saturday morning), but it almost preposterous when one of them tries to rough up Curtis Jackson, (a.k.a. 50 Cent), who plays a sleazy drug dealer.

I can't say there are actually any standouts in the film, although Carla Gugino does a well enough as a CSI and as Turk's nymphomaniac girlfriend, but she is too young for him and that kind of creeped me out. Leguizamo and Wahlberg have a few notable moments, but nothing to save this uninteresting, ridiculous film. I am placing a D in my grade book and I don't feel bad doing it. I chock ‘Righteous Kill' up the yet another bad decision by two actors who should know better. Ultimately, I guess, a paycheck is a paycheck and to heck with art.

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