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Righteous Kill
Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 27 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 43 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama | Mystery
Written by: Russell Gewirtz
Directed by: Jon Avnet
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 12, 2008
DVD: January 6, 2009
Running Time: 100 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for violence, pervasive language, some sexuality and brief drug use
Starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, 50 Cent, Donnie Wahlberg, and Carla Gugino
A serial murderer walks the streets of Manhattan, targeting violent felons who have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system. All the victims are suspected criminals whose bodies are found accompanied by a four-line poem justifying the killing. The killer’s mission is to do what the cops can’t do on their own—take bad guys off the streets for good. When a notorious pimp becomes one of the killer’s victims, highly decorated detectives Turk and Rooster are called in to investigate. This case could easily be the biggest one in their 30 years on the force. With the unwitting help of a local drug dealer the detectives follow what few clues they have, but their search soon turns inward, eventually leading them full circle as they realize the killer may be one of their own. (Overture Films)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: 88 Minutes Uprising
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Film Threat Stina Chyn
I'd like to recognize Russell Gewirtz for a screenplay that boasts humor, an impressive plot twist, and for setting up plenty of room for De Niro and Pacino to get their grooves back in order.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Mary Elizabeth Williams
Despite how easy it would be to write off Righteous Kill as one sorry excuse for lazy filmmaking, there is still something utterly mesmerizing in the palpable chemistry between the two leading men.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
A twisty, turny and ultimately silly thriller from "Inside Man's" Russell Gewirtz.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Luke Sader
An ordinary cop picture boosted by two charismatic superstars but hindered by its dearth of surprises.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub
A relatively harmless movie that becomes killing-a-mockingbird sinful for what it does to its leads.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
The entire movie is one big build-up to a twist that, while not exactly cheating, plays is an awfully cheap trick.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Neely Tucker
It's astonishing how much intensity and focus these two have lost, but the picture itself is not all that bad -- if you can get the collapsing-career thing out of your head.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
In pairing the two icons, Righteous Kill is definitely an event. What it isn't is much of a movie. Such a waste.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Gene Seymour
Righteous Kill's script is credited to "Inside Man's" Russell Gewirtz, and you wonder how the sleek, nuanced flow of that earlier movie evaded this one.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The movie, which has more than 10 credited producers, feels like one of those slick, for-the-money projects Hollywood studios cook up via graph charts and marketing surveys.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Its failure to live up to even modest expectations is a blow. There's nothing righteous to be found here.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Joshua Katzman
Watching these old pros play longtime buddies is a pleasure, especially since they're together in most scenes. But this thriller by Jon Avnet (88 Minutes) is mostly by the numbers, and its surprise ending, though effective, feels somewhat forced.
Read Full Review >NPR Bob Mondello
Slack, morally ambiguous, decidedly sub-Dexter serial-killer-cop story that's been cooked up for them (De Niro/Pacino).
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Trudging through a thriller that would have felt warmed over in 1988, the pair investigate a serial killer.
Read Full Review >Variety Justin Chang
Unable or unwilling to match the visceral chops and moral provocations of superior serial-killer chillers, Righteous Kill is content to be a twisty genre exercise; it's like "Seven" as reimagined by M. Night Shyamalan.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
A clutter of recycled cop-movie and serial-killer film clichés.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
Of the supporting performances, Gugino, Leguizamo and Wahlberg offer solid turns, but are let down by dialogue.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Instead of the meeting of maestros at the top of their form, Righteous Kill has the feeling of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds facing off for the first time in an exhibition game. It's like Old Timers' Day at the Motion Picture Home.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Tim Grierson
It's a sad state of affairs when the best news about Righteous Kill is that it isn't awful.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Under the guidance of Jon Avnet, they're (De Niro/Pacino) both playing New York police detectives - partners, no less - in the cop-and-serial-killer tale Righteous Kill, and they're thunderously mediocre.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Jason Matloff
When actors are as great as De Niro and Pacino, watching them in a movie like Righteous Kill is deadly.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
By the time the movie reaches its protracted conclusion, it feels like a slog. Pacino has a few funny lines, as does Leguizamo, but not nearly enough to save the film from collapsing under the weight of its own self-righteous tedium.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
The movie is hectic, exhausting, and baffling. It's an embarrassment.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
It's not much fun to see these two reduced to "Mad TV" parodies of themselves.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Righteous Kill, a.k.a. The Al and Bob Show, is a cop flick with all the drama of "Law and Order: AARP." This movie defines drag-ass.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
A slow-moving, ridiculous police thriller that would have been shipped straight to the remainder bin at Blockbuster if it starred anyone else.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
There's nothing righteous about this tired and tiresome good cop/bad cop NYPD procedural.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.1 (out of 10) based on 43 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
mig gave it a10:
U people r just hating. This movie was awesome. 88 minutes was the worst movie in history. This one was awesome.
Zack S. gave it an8:
I highly enjoyed this movie. Ya it was a little slow but it kept me guessing and i really did not expect the ending. I really recommend this movie it was just a good movie
Patrick M. gave it a0:
I just pretend that this movie doesn't exist and that these two actors are dead. This was the worst film of the year. Everything about it was sh*t.
Mark B. gave it a3:
After making (and getting torpedoed for) Sabrina and Random Hearts for director Sydney Pollack, Harrison Ford reportedly vowed never to work with him again. Recent sad and untimely events have rendered this a permanent nonissue, but perhaps Al Pacino should similarly just say no to a third collaboration with Jon the Fried Green Tomatoes guy (not to be confused with Jon the Singing Detective guy or Jon the National Treasure 1 & 2 guy). Pacino's first film for Jon Avnet, 88 Minutes, wasn't all THAT bad--it was the equivalent of a mystery paperback that provides an acceptable beach read but that you'd be hard pressed to recall any details of two hours after finishing it. But his second film with Avnet (and third with Robert DeNiro), Righteous Kill, is a disaster, a thoroughly artificial and fraudulent police thriller that's about as street-smart as a blind man crossing a busy intersection without benefit of dog. Vigilante movies almost by nature range from morally questionable to ethically nonexistent, but I'd trade Michael Winner's and J. Lee Thompson's entire seamy Charles Bronson Cannon Pictures output (which at least wasn't BORING) for this (which IS). And if there's one thing I want less to witness on screen than either or both acting legends having a discussion about The Brady Bunch (proving once and for all to anyone who's still unconvinced that Hollywood screenwriters' Tarantinoesque fascination with ephemeral pop culture psuedo-landmarks has now officially Gone Too Far), it's a mystery whose audience-cheating resolution recalls, of all things, the Which-Cyclist-Has-The-Fatal-Disease climax of Steve Tesich's and John Badham's horrible, instantly forgettable 1980s sports flick American Flyers. Many viewers who felt cheated by the fact that DeNiro and Pacino shared only one big scene together in Michael Mann's gargantuan meditation on law and order, Heat, could at least take comfort in the realization that said sequence at least showed off both greats at the near-peak of their powers. Righteous Kill's most egregious crime is that it renders the two guys almost completely irrelevant, which in some ways may not totally be a bad thing: now that Leonardo DiCaprio has replaced DeNiro as Martin Scorsese's BFF, perhaps DeNiro can now focus full-time on his own superb, 2-for-2 directorial career (A Bronx Tale, The Good Shepherd). As for Pacino, perhaps he can take a hint from 1930s and 40s Universal horror flicks and go for Scarface 2: The Return, wherein Tony Montana, whose Olympic-sized white-powder consumption helped him survive the machine gun attack, reemerges to assume a shadowy but significant role in the hip-hop recording industry.
Joe B. gave it a5:
There's been a lot of talk about this movie, mostly bad. I watched it last night and was quite interested to see where it would go wrong. It never really does though, I think the main issue here is how pedestrian the actual movie looks. It's generic quality does little to distinguish it from countless other films made in this style. The lead performances are not horrible, they're just uninspired. Any two actors could have played the De Niro and Pacino roles. People expect these guys to be able to direct themselves when we've clearly learned from historical accounts that even the greatest actors need solid direction. Jon Avnet is really the perp here, guiding both men through a series of re-hashes from other films hoping to score points as an homage. The baseball scene at the beginning is clearly aping "The Fan", while the ending is a shameless replay of the ending from "Heat". De Niro should not have been allowed to rest on his laurels (mugging and turning down the corners of his mouth at every opportunity), while Pacino was never really given a whole lot to do other than react. I understand that the idea of making a film in their home town and to be able to "buddy it up" for a few weeks was alluring in itself, but seriously, don't these guys have some people around them to bounce these scripts off of? I mean, what would it take for De Niro to send a copy of the script to his good friend Marty and say, "whatdya think?" In the end, I suppose the decision to make this film made was made for myriad reasons, none of which however, seem to stem from anything sincere.
Henry O gave it a1:
Wow... didnt expect this one to be as c**p as it turned out to be, it was the first time I actually walked out of a cinema in disgust. Bad story, very poor performance from De Niro and Pacino!
Kyle S. gave it a2:
I can't understand how anyone could find the ending surprising. It was literally one of the most obvious "twists" I've ever seen. Whatever happened to just telling a good story? Pacino and DeNiro were, really, the best thing about the film. But that's not saying much. Terrible movie.
