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Dear Sirs,
Whatever it is you think you've been doing these last few years... stop. Just stop. There's no excuse, other than apathy and greed, for the wretched state of the work you've been taking the last few years. Righteous Kill, this new cop thriller thing the two of you are in, is the nadir of both of your careers. And yet, it's symptomatic - consider that, in this decade, your talents have been put to use in Hide and Seek, Two for the Money, Meet the Fockers and Gigli. Your titanic reputations allow you guys to make stinkers that would have lesser stars run out of town covered in feathers and pitch. Combine that with the enduring mystique of seeing you two together, and this is what you get. Eventually, this film was going to happen in some way or another, and it was always fated to be bad.
But did it have to be this bad? I have to assume that Russell Gewirtz's screenplay was much changed from the time you read it to the time came to actually begin filming, as I can't imagine what was attractive about the direct-to-video-level garbage we see on screen. Maybe the premise spoke to you. I guess it's not a bad premise: Two veteran cops, Turk (that's you, Mr. De Niro) and Rooster (that's you, Mr. Pacino), become embroiled in a serial murder investigation where the killer is offing unredeemable criminal types, with a disconcerting amount of evidence pointing towards a police officer as the culprit. A good film could be made from this. A few interesting films have already been made from examining the idea of a policeman as a moral vigilante (Dirty Harry springs immediately to mind).
Such a film requires taking a moral stance and engaging with the material beyond the surface. Righteous Kill is not such a film; by all evidence, it never cared to become anything other than a pile of cliches lacquered together with vulgarity and ugliness. I'm not necessarily one to complain about obscenity, but there's something about the aimlessness and quantity of the obscenity in this film that makes it feel scummy. In particular, there's a scene where the killer lashes out in an attempt to "do the unforgiveable," and it's not the content that irks but the fact that it has no bearing on anything else in the film. It's just sick-minded window dressing.
So again I ask: What attracted two men of of your somehow-still-formidable stature to a rancid piece of claptrap like this? Was it a desire to see if you could make something out of the terrible script? Did you, Mr. Pacino, have a burning yen to spit sub-Tarantino dialogue about how Underdog created a nation of addicts? Did you, Mr. De Niro, long for a role in which most of your heavy emoting is done via recitation to a security camera? Both of you sleepwalk through the film, lazily leaning on your calcified personas. Would it not have been more interesting to see the two of you switch roles, so that Mr. Pacino played the glowering, grimacing quiet guy and Mr. De Niro played the brash, confident hotshot?
Was it maybe a personal thing for you, Mr. Pacino? Did you have such a great time working with director Jon Avnet on 88 Minutes that you just had to work with him again, despite Mr. Avnet's demonstrated incompetence when it comes to the direction of action scenes? Forget complex shootouts - Mr. Avnet can't even stage a softball brawl in a way that the audience can discern what's happening. His attempts at stylistics are generally embarassing, from the opening Avid-fart montage that recalls, in all the wrong ways, the opening credits to some as-yet unrealized CSI spinoff to the far-too-heavy shadows in the climactic warehouse confrontation. His attempts at obsfuscating the script's nonsensical Big Dumb Plot Twist are laughable. Helping out friends is admirable, but it's no way to keep a career vital, Mr. Pacino. Look where Burt Reynolds ended up after he tried to help out Hal Needham a few too many times.
If it's not the script or the director, was it then the appeal of working with the diverse thespian cast? If that's it, I guess I understand Mr. De Niro's perspective on a base level; after all, he gets Carla Gugino as a love interest. Besides, who can resist the magnetic personality of Donnie Wahlberg? But that said, if that is indeed the justification for showing up, how did neither of you walk off the set when you learned you would be playing scenes opposite 50 Cent? That's like Tom Brady being told that his new wide receiver is a Holstein cow. I know casting isn't something you guys have any control over, but still. If you cared about your work, you'd immediately demand a costar who can at least open his mouth when he speaks.
But then, I rather doubt either of you care much these days about your work beyond the paycheck it nets. Please, sirs, I implore you to take a few years off. Go develop a hobby. Write a book. Maybe do what Daniel Day-Lewis did and go off to make shoes in Italy. You need it, and your audience needs it.
Sincerely,
Steve C.
- Steve Carlson (2 comments)