I'd heard bad things about RIGHTEOUS KILL, but how could any cop thriller teaming up two of the best actors of all time be all that bad? By the time it showed up on terrestrial TV, I was all ready to give it a sympathetic viewing if only for the pleasure of watching two former heavyweights back on-screen together.
Sadly, what they said about RIGHTEOUS KILL turns out to be true: this is a piece of hokum, a badly-scripted and equally poorly-directed example of movie-making. It's so cheap and lacking in incident that the whole film seems to be taking place either in some dimly-lit warehouse or in a dimly-lit police station, and there's no style, no finesse or indeed energy injected into the proceedings at any point.
The whole plot hangs on to a lame twist that's so glaringly obvious that you wonder how it got past studio bosses - do they really think audiences are this dim? Pacino and De Niro do their best with what they've got, but they do seem faintly embarrassed, as if they can tell this is no good and they're in a hurry to get it done and dusted as quickly as they can. A handful of interesting supporting actors (including Brian Dennehy) fail to provide inspiration, leaving this a lifeless dud of a film.
Sadly, what they said about RIGHTEOUS KILL turns out to be true: this is a piece of hokum, a badly-scripted and equally poorly-directed example of movie-making. It's so cheap and lacking in incident that the whole film seems to be taking place either in some dimly-lit warehouse or in a dimly-lit police station, and there's no style, no finesse or indeed energy injected into the proceedings at any point.
The whole plot hangs on to a lame twist that's so glaringly obvious that you wonder how it got past studio bosses - do they really think audiences are this dim? Pacino and De Niro do their best with what they've got, but they do seem faintly embarrassed, as if they can tell this is no good and they're in a hurry to get it done and dusted as quickly as they can. A handful of interesting supporting actors (including Brian Dennehy) fail to provide inspiration, leaving this a lifeless dud of a film.