Two aging homicide detectives (Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino) investigate the vengeance slayings of a string of bad guys; it soon becomes clear that one of these two men are behind the killings.

CRITIQUE

Once upon a time, teaming up Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino was an event.  The two legends were both in Godfather 2 (though they didn’t share screen time) and had some memorable scenes together in Heat.  Unfortunately, Righteous Kill is just a mess, and a sad reminder of how uninteresting both actors have become in recent years.

Righteous Kill is a gimmicky thriller about someone who is gunning down bad guys, and leaving poems at the scene.  The main gimmick is that intercut throughout are clips of Robert DeNiro’s character Turk apparently confessing to the killings, which really only leaves two possibilities, that Turk is actually guilty, meaning that most of the script doesn’t have much mystery or real drama, or that Turk is covering for his partner Rooster (Al Pacino) meaning that the movie is contrived and not all that convincing.

The main problem is that it is a long slog to the end to get to the unsurprising, unsatisfying revelation about what is going on.  Because we aren’t invested in wondering if the killer will get caught, it’s hard to care about a lot of the action here, or the question of whether a pair of rival detectives (played by John Leguizamo and Mark Wahlberg) will figure out what is going on.

The cast here is solid from top to bottom, and Carla Gugino has fun playing a cop with a kinky side.  But DeNiro and Pacino really aren’t given much here to work with; neither has anything resembling a fully-fleshed out character to play.  Though both have a good acting moment or two along the way, there’s just not nearly enough here that works to draw us in, or make us care about the ultimate choices that both have to make, while Pacino’s character in particular just gets ridiculous by the end.

The movie is directed by Jon Avnet, who also helmed the even-less-successful Pacino film 88 Minutes this year, which similarly had an unconvincing plot building to an unsatisfying climax.  In 20 years, when people are putting together retrospectives of Pacino’s career, neither of these movies will come close to making the list of his best work.

THE VIDEO

Righteous Kill is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen.  The picture quality is generally good.

THE AUDIO

Righteous Kill is presented in English 5.1 Dolby Digital.  Dialogue, music and sound effects come through clear.  There are English and Spanish subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

There is an Audio Commentary with director Jon Avnet that talks more about the actors and the story than technical stuff.  It’s the kind of thing that would have been more interesting had the movie been better.

The Investigation is a fairly standard 14–minute making-of featurette in which the actors and director talk about the film, intercut with some behind-the-scenes footage.

The Thin Blue Line is a 19–minute documentary about the challenges featuring law enforcement today and cops who bend the rules, intercut with clips from the movie.

There is also the film’s Theatrical Trailer.

FINAL THOUGHT

The restaurant scene in Heat was ten times better than anything we get here.