Righteous Kill

Righteous Kill

By Jonathan Fisher, September 23rd, 2008

Bringing Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, two of the greatest actors in movie history, together has proved rather elusive over the last thirty years. They did star together in The Godfather Part II, but the structure of the film was such that they never shared a scene. Additionally, they starred together in Heat in 1995, but again due to the film's structure only shared one scene, which to many (myself not included) was a disappointment. The two men, one a cop and the other a robber, shared a cup of coffee in a diner, quietly examining (without saying it in so many words) the role that the other played in their life. Righteous Kill brings them together for an entire feature-length film. Hardly a scene goes by in which they don't exchange lines. This novelty of seeing two of the greatest actors ever work together might be enough to convince people to shell out the fifteen or so dollars to see Righteous Kill. The quality of the film, for most, will be irrelevant. But surely something with this great duo will have some merit?

I suppose it does. But the truth is, Righteous Kill falls somewhere in the middle of the canon of the two great actors. For Pacino, it's more on par with something like The Recruit than Scent of a Woman. For De Niro, it's closer to The Fan than Goodfellas. Righteous Kill is about two cops, Turk (De Niro) and Rooster (Pacino) who have been partners for many years. As we meet them, they are on the trail of a serial killer who murders suspects in violent crimes who were not convicted on technicalities. The opening scene of the film features a taped 'confession' by one of the two partners suggesting that he is the killer. Also working on the case is another younger team played by John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg. Turk is also entangled in a romance with another officer played by Carla Gugino, whose suspicions are raised when speculation arises that Turk is himself the killer.

The moral of Righteous Kill is a well-worn one in cop films -- that years of service eventually erodes the distinction between good and evil. We discover early in the film that years earlier, Turk crossed the line by planting evidence in a child-killer's house who had been let off on a technicality (a handy plot motif in films like this). De Niro's performance as Turk was my favourite of the film. The character of Turk is the only one in the film with any real substance, as De Niro plays him with quiet introspection as a hardened man who is reflective about the good and bad things he has done during his time as an officer. The fact that he lost his wife years earlier complicates his romance with Gugino, and De Niro finds the perfect pitch. Pacino is a little less multifaceted as Rooster. As he has been prone to do in the last fifteen years or so, he growls his way through most of his scenes.

Righteous Kill hums along at a good b-movieish sort of pace, with the occasional red herring and a moment or two of decent tension. There's an interesting sub-plot involving a drug dealer played by 50 Cent (who is credited as 'Curtis Jackson', perhaps an indication that he wants to shed his rap star persona and become a movie star) and one of his clients who is enlisted by Turk and Rooster to rat him out. The movie's script was written by Russell Gerwitz, whose pen was behind Spike Lee's superior 2006 heist movie Inside Man, but this time he relies more on gimmick than style and nuance. The film's director is Jon Avnet, whose previous film was another collaboration with Pacino called 88 Minutes, which flopped horrendously in the US and didn't even get a cinema release in this country (the first Al Pacino film not to be released in Australia).

There is a major twist in Righteous Kill that is sign-posted from the outset. I actually guessed it in the second or third scene. It is meant to come about as a revelation that makes everything preceding it make sense, but in reality it's an eye-roller. And, worst of all, there are moments in this film that just drag. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are two men that can look at words on a page and bring them to ferocious life like few others can. It's a bad sign when even they, working together for the first time, cannot completely save a film. They are great actors -- Righteous Kill is not a great film.