It's been 13 years since Heat and the comparisons to the 1995 masterpiece starring these same two method acting powerhouses will be inevitable. Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro were in top form a decade ago when they shared the screen for the first time (both appeared in The Godfather Part II but never together).
Well, if Heat left big shoes to fill, I don't want to stack the deck even further against Righteous Kill by bringing up The Godfather.
That said, when these two hook up, I certainly expect huge things script-wise. It should take something truly epic, something that couldn't possibly be trusted in any other hands, to bring these two together. Their box office appeals might be waning slightly as they advance in years, but they should not be reuniting just to combine their drawing power and attempt to prove their box office relevance.
This film didn't reek of such an attempt, and since their target audiences are almost identical, it would be an almost futile attempt. This film was not in the sad vein of 88 Minutes, where I felt like I was watching Al Pacino wade his way through a movie-of-the-week script. In this case, we at least have a theatre-worthy script and production. It is just not quite DeNiro-plus-Pacino-worthy.
Pacino and DeNiro play two seasoned and grizzled cops on the hunt of a too-close-to-home serial killer of hard-to-convict criminals. Kind of like Dexter plus thirty years. The good news is that these two can still act. Whenever they're on the screen, they're doing what they do best. But maybe I've been spoiled by these guys for too long, so that I simply expect five stars from them all of the time.
The bad news is that they don't want to age too gracefully. I found the opening two minutes to be the worst part of the film. It was a random collage of the two of them shooting guns at the firing range, working out at the gym, and Pacino demonstrating that he is the finest chess player in existence (which is hardly ever revisited except in really blunt metaphors).
Anyway, when you have these two virtuosos at your disposal, you don't need to resort to clumsy patchwork "character building" montages to open a movie. It was the complete opposite of the manner in which we finally waited for the two to unite onscreen in Heat, and while the filmmakers undoubtedly (and wisely) avoided excessive parallels with the earlier film...this was just a bit too much, too fast for me.
That said, the movie did improve from there. It's worth watching. But if you have these two guys on a pedestal like so many of us do, your expectations may not be met. The supporting cast is solid, including the always-reliable Brian Dennehy (First Blood), John Leguizamo, Carla Gugino and even a solid performance by 50 Cent.
Lastly, here's a glimpse at the theatrical trailer.
