Review of Righteous Kill (2008) by Markb. — 08 Jan 2009

After making (and getting torpedoed for) Sabrina and Random Hearts for director Sydney Pollack, Harrison Ford reportedly vowed never to work with him again. Recent sad and untimely events have rendered this a permanent nonissue, but perhaps Al Pacino should similarly just say no to a third collaboration with Jon the Fried Green Tomatoes guy (not to be confused with Jon the Singing Detective guy or Jon the National Treasure 1 & 2 guy).

Pacino's first film for Jon Avnet, 88 Minutes, wasn't all THAT bad--it was the equivalent of a mystery paperback that provides an acceptable beach read but that you'd be hard pressed to recall any details of two hours after finishing it.

But his second film with Avnet (and third with Robert DeNiro), Righteous Kill, is a disaster, a thoroughly artificial and fraudulent police thriller that's about as street-smart as a blind man crossing a busy intersection without benefit of dog.

Vigilante movies almost by nature range from morally questionable to ethically nonexistent, but I'd trade Michael Winner's and J. Lee Thompson's entire seamy Charles Bronson Cannon Pictures output (which at least wasn't BORING) for this (which IS).

And if there's one thing I want less to witness on screen than either or both acting legends having a discussion about The Brady Bunch (proving once and for all to anyone who's still unconvinced that Hollywood screenwriters' Tarantinoesque fascination with ephemeral pop culture psuedo-landmarks has now officially Gone Too Far), it's a mystery whose audience-cheating resolution recalls, of all things, the Which-Cyclist-Has-The-Fatal-Disease climax of Steve Tesich's and John Badham's horrible, instantly forgettable 1980s sports flick American Flyers.

Many viewers who felt cheated by the fact that DeNiro and Pacino shared only one big scene together in Michael Mann's gargantuan meditation on law and order, Heat, could at least take comfort in the realization that said sequence at least showed off both greats at the near-peak of their powers.

Righteous Kill's most egregious crime is that it renders the two guys almost completely irrelevant, which in some ways may not totally be a bad thing: now that Leonardo DiCaprio has replaced DeNiro as Martin Scorsese's BFF, perhaps DeNiro can now focus full-time on his own superb, 2-for-2 directorial career (A Bronx Tale, The Good Shepherd).

As for Pacino, perhaps he can take a hint from 1930s and 40s Universal horror flicks and go for Scarface 2: The Return, wherein Tony Montana, whose Olympic-sized white-powder consumption helped him survive the machine gun attack, reemerges to assume a shadowy but significant role in the hip-hop recording industry.