Despite being responsible for some of the most iconic performances in some of the greatest movies of the last three decades, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino have had their share of misfires. With 120+ movies between them, that’s going to happen; I’ll sit through Rocky And Bullwinkle, in which De Niro hams it up as 'Fearless Leader’, if it means Raging Bull will get made; The Devil’s Advocate (Pacino’s 1997 shocker as The Devil opposite Keanu Reeves) is a small price to pay for The Godfather. Every actor’s got 'em...
But not every actor has a Righteous Kill on their resume.
'De Cino’ play Dave Fisk and 'Turk’, two crusty, jaded NYPD detectives who, despite 30 years on the job, are still bucking the system at every opportunity, much to the annoyance of their C.O., Brian Dennehy (gee, he was good in Cocoon). De Niro’s 'Turk’ is a disillusioned, trigger-happy short-fuse, indulging in rough sex with a C.S.I. colleague, Carla Gugino, and dabbling in a little evidence-tampering to ensure legal-technicalities don’t keep child-killers out of jail; Pacino’s 'Fisk’ is a laidback career cop, in sight of the pension and just keen to keep out of harm’s way.
Cliches pile upon clichés as bad guys with alibis start turning up dead. Interweaved with straight-to-camera scenes from De Niro confessing to the crimes, Righteous Kill puts all its cards on the table from Scene 1, ensuring that for the best part of its entire running time, there is no tension. With De Niro wolfing down the scenery like party peanuts for the first 70 minutes, it ain’t hard to pick who is going to be the focus of the final reel plot twist and get to unleash some real acting histrionics. Suffice to say, if it’s seething, earnest, moustache-twirling villainy you’re after, you won’t be disappointed.
One major problem is that these actors are now past their physical primes. De Niro, asked to jog between buildings in the film’s climax, looks like my uncle playing backyard cricket at Christmas time. Pacino, his haggard face at odds with his overly-moussed hair, takes deeps breathes between action scenes as though he’d rather be in his favourite chair. I’m not being ageist, I promise you, but merely highlighting the fact that actors like Sean Connery, Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman – all contemporaries of 'De Cino’ – have retired gracefully from the action man roles, even active man roles, that they all pulled-off until five years ago.
Righteous Kill would have been awful with anyone in the lead roles, though it is undeniably more excrutiating to watch these great actors suffering as they do. And, as bad as hack-director Jon Avnet is with a camera, you can’t blame anyone but them – with 120-odd movies to learn from and their star-power to throw around, you would think 'De Cino’ could have ensured at least a coherent script heading into production.
Hard to believe that the first full-length, onscreen, co-starring roles of the two greatest actors of our generation would also amount to the worst film either of them have ever made.
