A righteous bore

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are two of the greatest actors of their generation, and if Righteous Kill was made 20 years ago, it might have been a great movie.

But it wasn’t. It was made in 2008. And De Niro and Pacino are showing their age.

Both actors made their careers playing complicated gangsters and nuanced badasses, but in Righteous Kill, where they play cops on the trail of a killer, their acting is a mere pastiche of their former characters. Are they really content to imitate themselves?

I’m asking, of course, because the presence of these infamous actors in Righteous Kill–the only movie where they share screen time besides a brief scene in Heat–should have turned the standard police-thriller boilerplate into something more. Or at least something interesting.

Instead, we get two weathered mugs playing the same roles they’ve always played and doing what old people do best: boring the crap out of everyone. (Director Jon Avnet forgot to film the scenes where De Niro forgets his daughter’s name or Pacino poops himself. Which, come to think of it, probably would have made the movie a lot better.)

So here’s the plot: Through a series of flashbacks, we see two geezer cops are at the end of their careers. The narrator is De Niro’s character, Turk, and he seems to be confessing to a series of vigilante-style murders of drug dealers and the like. But as the twists and turns of the investigation unfold, and the story is slowly unraveled, it seems that maybe, just maybe, things are not as they appear.

Along the way, the supporting cast comes in and out. There’re the competing detectives who are suspicious of the oldsters. There’s Turk’s younger girlfriend who likes rough sex. There’s 50 Cent, who plays a drug dealer. None of these characters are enough of a presence to raise the movie from the drudgery of De Niro and Pacino.

Just to be clear–this mediocre crap fest was not just caused by the actors. The story gets downright confusing at times. The editing makes the film’s 100-minute running time feel like an eternity. The filming is inconsistent and poorly composed. And the script is plain and emotionless. (A sample line, from when the murderer explains his reasons for killing: “I hate scumbags. I like shooting people.” OK dude, if you say so.)

There’s also a series of inexplicably strange moments in Righteous Kill, which as far as I can tell serve no purpose.

Who decided that De Niro needed to be sexed up? Do we really need to see him humping someone? And what’s with the weird “skateboard pimp” played by pro skateboarder Rob Dyrdek? Did anyone think about the construction of this movie, or was it just thrown together under the auspices of “star power”?

So, that’s really what Righteous Kill comes down to. De Niro plays De Niro, Pacino plays Pacino and a crappy movie, well, it stays a crappy movie.

Righteous Kill1 1/2 stars In theaters everywhere