Righteous Kill: Critic Reviews

It's not much fun to see these two reduced to Mad TV parodies of themselves. In the right movie, they'd stop coasting on their legends long enough to remind us how they became them.

Time, alas, doesn't so much pass in Righteous Kill as crawl, despite the usual overcutting, which tries to pump energy into the inert proceedings.

They require a bigger stage, a sharper script and a more rigorous director. Without these, the long-awaited De Niro/Pacino show amounts to nothing so much as a novelty bout, a celebrity sparring session. Its sound and fury signifies very little.

Pacino has a few funny lines, as does Leguizamo, but not nearly enough to save the film from collapsing under the weight of its own self-righteous tedium.

It's astonishing how much intensity and focus these two have lost, but the picture itself is not all that bad -- if you can get the collapsing-career thing out of your head.

Say it ain't so, Bobby and Al.

How not to dig into the experience of seeing two of cinema's greatest legends working side by side? Well, first we could focus on the plot:

In every way that matters (indeed, in just about every way a movie can), Righteous Kill fails to deliver.

The movie is hectic, exhausting, and baffling.

Taken purely on its merits as a psychological thriller, Righteous Kill is probably a two-star film. The third star is there strictly for De Niro and Pacino. Playing off each other, they stir up the ghosts of past greatness.

This thriller by Jon Avnet is mostly by the numbers, and its surprise ending, though effective, feels somewhat forced.

A twisty, turny and ultimately silly thriller.

Enduring a contrived and convoluted crime drama would be worthwhile if it featured powerhouse performances from the two best screen actors of their generation. Such is not the case.

At once groaningly predictable and needlessly convoluted.

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro collect bloated paychecks with intent to bore in Righteous Kill, a slow-moving, ridiculous police thriller that would have been shipped straight to the remainder bin at Blockbuster if it starred anyone else.

Everybody involved has earned a more righteous, movie and righteous director, than this.

The power couple's onscreen chemistry, which should be the film's strongest calling card, is merely adequate, a major disappointment for those expecting a tug o' war between screen titans.

Pacino is careful to rein in his bad habits in such company, and De Niro is De Niro; neither, however, can do much with material this trite. So, watching them, we're really seeing, and applauding, the ghosts of roles past.

Director Jon Avnet generously puts the actors together as often as possible, and the sheer satisfaction of watching Michael Corleone and Travis Bickle spark off each other almost mitigates the utter hokum that permeates every other element of the film.

There's nothing righteous to be found here.

An ordinary cop picture boosted by two charismatic superstars but hindered by its dearth of surprises.

It's not that the crime thriller Righteous Kill is spectacularly awful. It's just thoroughly mediocre - a standard police procedural, a long episode of Law & Order, unremarkable but for the pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

Righteous Kill, a.k.a. The Al and Bob Show, is a cop flick with all the drama of Law and Order: AARP.

They seem comfortable enough in each other's company on-screen to make you wish there were more scenes that allowed them to just kick back and riff. It'd be a lot more enjoyable than watching the movie strain for clarity -- or cleverness.