Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
9/14/08
De
Niro. Pacino. Brand names for fans of a certain kind of movie
and a certain school of acting: if you think the 70's were Hollywood's
greatest decade, you no doubt get a little misty whenever you think of
their single scene together in the popular (albeit overrated) 1995 police
thriller Heat. For whatever reason, that was the only time
the two icons had shared on screen in their long, legendary careers, until
now. Righteous Kill is a nicely tricky, above-average police
thriller on the page that is kicked up several notches by at long last
putting the two Greatest Actors of their generation together for long stretches
in roles perfectly tailored to their personas. While I loved just
watching them do what they do together, the movie itself kinda snuck up
on me, but by the time it's done playing all of writer Russell Gewirtz's
clever cards, this is a genuinely engrossing and morally complex thriller
that's a worthy addition to both men's formidable resumes.
Two
Internal Affairs officers (Sterling K. Brown & Alan Rosenberg) watch
a videotape of a Police Detective everyone calls Turk (De Niro) confessing
to a series of murders. The tape continues to serve as narration
as we flash back to “how it all began”. Turk and his long-time partner
Rooster (Pacino) find themselves stumbling onto a serial murder case:
the killer targets criminals who've escaped either prosecution or conviction
and leaves behind poems about the killings written on index cards.
Since one of the murders was already under investigation by Detectives
Perez (John Leguizamo) and Riley (Donnie Wahlberg), they join the investigation
and quickly zero in on a suspect: Turk. Rooster runs interference
for his friend, but slowly but surely the noose tightens. We know
Turk once falsified evidence to assure the conviction of an acquitted murderer
for a different crime he didn't commit, so is it much of a leap to assume
he's behind these killings? After all, the man is confessing before
our very eyes...
Usually
I save the talk about the performances until later in the review, but since
that's why we're all here, let's cut to the chase. Neither Pacino
nor De Niro is doing career-best work in Righteous Kill, but both
are still running circles around just about anybody else you'd imagine
for these roles. And most importantly, there's a palpable camaraderie
between them as the sad, embittered Turk and the flamboyant, devil-may-care
Rooster fit together like puzzle pieces. De Niro's gift for blue
collar sincerity is put to good use, as it's hard to tell whether Turk
is flustered by fear of having his own guilt revealed or of simply having
his own failure to live up to his ethics years before thrown in his face.
Turk doesn't have a self-aware bone in his body, which makes it hard to
guess how his actions reflect on his own possible guilt. Pacino,
meanwhile, finds that sweet spot where he's both over-the-top and believable,
playing a man who's become so numb to the horrors he sees every day that
his world has simply become a stage upon which to perform. I was
reminded of his sensational work in The Devil's Advocate, another
time he's playing a character who never shows us anything that's not for
effect. When we first meet Rooster, he's playing chess against multiple
opponents at once, lecturing them on how the same skills that made Bobby
Fischer able to anticipate his opponents moves eventually drove him mad
with paranoia. It's one of those great, bravura Pacino moments that
puts everything we're about to see from him in doubt. Encouraged
in no doubt equal part by the stature of their co-stars and the snappiness
of Gewirtz's dialog, the rest of the cast follows with nicely lived-in
performances. Leguizamo and Whalberg make convincing partners and
cops while Carla Gugino proves a perfect choice for the crime scene tech
whose kinky relationship with Turk also makes her a good suspect.
I really liked Trilby Glover in a few scenes as a drug-using lawyer who
gets caught up in a police sting. My only complaint was that Curtis
Jackson (better known to music fans as 50 Cent) didn't have much luck enlivening
his cliched role as a drug dealing club owner with musical aspirations.
****SPOILER
ALERT: IT'S GONNA BE PRETTY MUCH IMPOSSIBLE TO MEANINGFULLY DISCUSS
THE PLOT WITHOUT POINTING YOU TOWARD THE SOLUTION, SO BE WARNED**** The
movie that contains these performances is awfully sneaky, putting a lot
of energy into that confession video and the procedural routine of solving
the case to distract us from what's really going on. Not that most
viewers won't know the “what”, but where Gewirtz's script shines is in
the way it responds to the question I kept asking myself over and over:
“It can't be THIS simple, but if it's not, then what am I looking at here?”
Once the climactic revelations are all on the table, it takes a mental
trip back through what we've just seen to realize how thematically rich
it actually is. Righteous Kill isn't so much decrying the
vigilante serial murders, which more or less decry themselves, as the notion
that you can commit a single unjust act. There are ripples to all
our choices, but Turk's the kind of guy who only knows how to put his head
down and move forward without thinking of the consequences of what
he thinks is right at any given moment. But when he sees the ripples
of his decision to frame that murderer, they are monstrous indeed. ****END
OF SPOILERS****
Righteous
Kill is Gewirtz's second produced screenplay, and it shares many of
the virtues of his first, the 2006 hit thriller Inside Man.
First and foremost is a sense of how to make characters going through genre
paces entertainingly conversational. It's easy to become a plot automaton
under those circumstances, but the things that come out of his people's
mouths are often both clever and unexpected, and if you give a good actor
lines that don't sound like they came off a plot teleprompter, the results
can be really special. He's also skilled at constructing a narrative
where you know in your heart WHAT'S going on, but not how or why.
Earlier this year, director Jon Avnet was behind the camera for Pacino's
career low point 88 Minutes, and it's interesting
to note how many of his directorial strategies here are the same, but this
time they actually make some sense. It's a wonder what a good screenplay
will do, both to vindicate its' director and energize its' cast.
Some
will be put off on principle by Righteous Kill, feeling that nothing
but an instant classic is worthy of pairing these two screen titans.
But if you give it a chance and let it tell its' tricky story, you might
be pleasantly surprised. It's a good, efficient thriller with a nifty
twist or two up its' sleeve. And that's more than enough to serve
as a delivery system for almost an hour of De Niro and Pacino sharing the
screen. Whoa, just gave myself chills again! |
