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Righteous Kill
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Metascore
36 out of 100

Generally unfavorable - based on 27 Critics What's this?

User Score
4.6 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 62 Ratings

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10 out of 10
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  • Starring: Al Pacino, Carla Gugino, Robert De Niro
  • Summary: 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)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 27
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 27
  3. Negative: 8 out of 27
  1. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Stina Chyn
    70
    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.
  2. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Mary Elizabeth Williams
    60
    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.
  3. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    38
    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.

See all 27 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 31
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 31
  3. Negative: 17 out of 31
  1. mig
    10
    U people r just hating. This movie was awesome. 88 minutes was the worst movie in history. This one was awesome.
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  2. ERG1008
    5
    Criminals get off lightly, die soon after with a "Righteous Kill", veteran detectives on the case. They're too old!!! Pacino & De Niro were great actors but this doesn't really work. Pacino looks like a cross between Paul McCartney & Richard Lewis from Curb your Enthusiasm & De Niro just grimaces his way through it. It is quite predictable but still not the worst thing I've seen all year.… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  3. MarkB.
    3
    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.… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes

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