I caught Righteous Kill on DSTV the other day and kind of half-watched it as I faffed around the house cleaning up (this was during our vaunted Spring Cleaning 2010 effort earlier this month). Now what had originally caught the eye of the critics in this Jon Avnet film when this movie was first released was of course the billing of Hollywood’s two premier screen names, Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino alongside one another in the lead roles for this contemporary crime thriller.
Now as one can imagine, these two gruff bulldogs both put in superb performances and do the best that anyone could ever hope to do with the lines given to them, and they are ably backed up by a decent cast that includes the likes of Brian Dennehy, Carla Gugino, John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg, not forgetting everyone’s favourite gangsta Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson as “Spider” of course!
But while the musical score, film editing and use of colour were all extremely ably handled, I couldn’t help but feel extremely let down by this film that depends so heavily on the final twist in its tale to make it work.
Why?
Well, the problem is that the movie makes it so bleeding obvious that it’s annoying. All the way through, from beginning to end, you have two partners working side by side to solve a string of murders, but at the same time the story paints the one cop so black that it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that obviously the guilty party is NOT the one that the story is so focused on accusing!
And at the end of it all when the twist is revealed and you are proven to be right, it just makes the whole experience that much more disappointing.
I’m not sure how it could have been done any differently, but one thing I do know is that this definitely feels like a bit of a waste of the first proper big screen time team-up of these legendary Hollywood heavyweights! :(
Related Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rightous_kill