Who'd think that behind a B-movie title such as "Righteous Kill" you'd have a new movie with De Niro and Pacino? Echoes of Dirty Harry movies, a-cop-is-the-killer thrillers, and even "The Star Chamber".
I can even understand some of the criticism directed at the story, but many people seem to be disappointed by Pacino and De Niro themselves. Hilarious. That's probably coming from the same "critics" that praise mediocrities such as Clooney, Pitt, Cruise or Diaz in the latest awful Scorsese, Spielberg, Soderbergh, Zemeckis, Howard or Coen film. But there you go... When the expectations are (too) high, people are bound to feel let down even when the product is good, whereas when you have low expectations (Di Caprio, Tom Hanks, and the like) you might even get positively surprised now and again by total crap: nowhere to go but up.
What exactly did they expect from the two veteran actors? Shouting and screaming, overacting, silly grimaces? They wisely leave the hysterical, bad acting to the likes of Travolta and Nicholas Coppola Cage.
The plot isn't 100% water-tight, but then again find me one thriller that has that. This genre is notorious for getting dumber and dumber by the decade: more far-fetched, more absurd, with plot-twists that are often funny rather than awe-inspiring. In RK the final twist is unexpected but not too problematic. The writer and the director cheated the viewer into not being able to suspect Pacino, and one can debate endlessly whether that kind of shtick was "fair" or not, but I had no problem with that. What I did have a problem with was Pacino's motive for becoming a loose cannon after decades in the police force: his reasoning is that De Niro's planting of evidence disillusioned him - and that's rather weak writing right there! Teary-eyed Pacino says this, and it's the single worst scene in the movie because it lacks credibility. The logic behind Pacino forcing his long-time partner to read the text was also never clarified - but they had to put that into the movie to justify the intro which fools the viewer in the first place! That's thriller-movie writing for ya; you twist and bend logic and characters in order to fit whatever plot device or twist you have in mind. Except that most other thrillers are FAR more idiotic.
The one major modern thriller cliché RK does have is that once again the mass-murderer is a cop. Though, at least that was revealed right from the start and not left as the movie's retarded end-twist. I have no idea why so many films nowadays have cop serial-killers: it's a dumb, unrealistic premise that has been milked dry in idiotic films like "Kiss The Girls" and "Night Watch". The main difference in RK is that the cop doesn't kill innocent people randomly, but targets only criminals who more than deserve it.
De Niro: "Our job is to keep 99% of the people safe from the other 1%. Problem is, the better we do that job the less the 99% think they need us. They're clueless. The only ones paying attention are the cops and the criminals. Everyone else is going shopping." I like this bit. Left-wing hence pathologically anti-authority Hollywood has made tons of money throughout the decades presenting the police as corrupt, immoral imbeciles, so it was nice to hear something as truthful as this.
(Of course, this quote can be widened to include the U.S. public's cluelessness about the terrorist threat as well. Many an attack were foiled by the CIA and FBI, hence many Americans think that the War On Terror is some overblown affair because nothing has blown up since 2001.)
RK is an entertaining movie. I get bored easily these days watching movies, but this one kept my interest for the 90 minutes, and that's not a small feat! The two leads were great - in spite of what deluded Spielberg and Zemeckis fans say - and if there is any bad acting then it could only come from the cast's "pop music section", 5 Cents and Donnie Wahlberg of teeny-sensation New Kids On The Block fame. Wahlberg is simply bland, whereas 5 Cents delivers his lines with the same apathetic monotone voice with which he raps in his dreary, moronic MTV-hyped hits. I was also disappointed in Brian Dennehy's casting; once a great presence, this guy has now face-lifted himself to the point where he is unable to convincingly portray a cop. The shining, ultra-white Hollywood teeth don't help either Lenguizamo was better than expected but hardly a revelation.
I can even understand some of the criticism directed at the story, but many people seem to be disappointed by Pacino and De Niro themselves. Hilarious. That's probably coming from the same "critics" that praise mediocrities such as Clooney, Pitt, Cruise or Diaz in the latest awful Scorsese, Spielberg, Soderbergh, Zemeckis, Howard or Coen film. But there you go... When the expectations are (too) high, people are bound to feel let down even when the product is good, whereas when you have low expectations (Di Caprio, Tom Hanks, and the like) you might even get positively surprised now and again by total crap: nowhere to go but up.
What exactly did they expect from the two veteran actors? Shouting and screaming, overacting, silly grimaces? They wisely leave the hysterical, bad acting to the likes of Travolta and Nicholas Coppola Cage.
The plot isn't 100% water-tight, but then again find me one thriller that has that. This genre is notorious for getting dumber and dumber by the decade: more far-fetched, more absurd, with plot-twists that are often funny rather than awe-inspiring. In RK the final twist is unexpected but not too problematic. The writer and the director cheated the viewer into not being able to suspect Pacino, and one can debate endlessly whether that kind of shtick was "fair" or not, but I had no problem with that. What I did have a problem with was Pacino's motive for becoming a loose cannon after decades in the police force: his reasoning is that De Niro's planting of evidence disillusioned him - and that's rather weak writing right there! Teary-eyed Pacino says this, and it's the single worst scene in the movie because it lacks credibility. The logic behind Pacino forcing his long-time partner to read the text was also never clarified - but they had to put that into the movie to justify the intro which fools the viewer in the first place! That's thriller-movie writing for ya; you twist and bend logic and characters in order to fit whatever plot device or twist you have in mind. Except that most other thrillers are FAR more idiotic.
The one major modern thriller cliché RK does have is that once again the mass-murderer is a cop. Though, at least that was revealed right from the start and not left as the movie's retarded end-twist. I have no idea why so many films nowadays have cop serial-killers: it's a dumb, unrealistic premise that has been milked dry in idiotic films like "Kiss The Girls" and "Night Watch". The main difference in RK is that the cop doesn't kill innocent people randomly, but targets only criminals who more than deserve it.
De Niro: "Our job is to keep 99% of the people safe from the other 1%. Problem is, the better we do that job the less the 99% think they need us. They're clueless. The only ones paying attention are the cops and the criminals. Everyone else is going shopping." I like this bit. Left-wing hence pathologically anti-authority Hollywood has made tons of money throughout the decades presenting the police as corrupt, immoral imbeciles, so it was nice to hear something as truthful as this.
(Of course, this quote can be widened to include the U.S. public's cluelessness about the terrorist threat as well. Many an attack were foiled by the CIA and FBI, hence many Americans think that the War On Terror is some overblown affair because nothing has blown up since 2001.)
RK is an entertaining movie. I get bored easily these days watching movies, but this one kept my interest for the 90 minutes, and that's not a small feat! The two leads were great - in spite of what deluded Spielberg and Zemeckis fans say - and if there is any bad acting then it could only come from the cast's "pop music section", 5 Cents and Donnie Wahlberg of teeny-sensation New Kids On The Block fame. Wahlberg is simply bland, whereas 5 Cents delivers his lines with the same apathetic monotone voice with which he raps in his dreary, moronic MTV-hyped hits. I was also disappointed in Brian Dennehy's casting; once a great presence, this guy has now face-lifted himself to the point where he is unable to convincingly portray a cop. The shining, ultra-white Hollywood teeth don't help either Lenguizamo was better than expected but hardly a revelation.