Tag: Al Pacino

Hunters (2020) s01e03 – While Visions Of Safta Danced In His Head

Maybe it’s just knowing Logan Lerman started in a YA franchise attempt (he was Percy Jackson) or because he’s got the dagger in his hand during the awesome opening titles every episode, but I wasn’t expecting him to have a whole “I feel super-guilty about killing these Nazis who are trying to kill us” arc.

While the team gets their introductions—Carol Kane is great, Josh Radnor is great—Lerman hangs out with his civilian friends and frets about his lifestyle choices. Except he’s also reading his safta’s journal entries from the concentration camp and her young ghost, Annie Hägg, is haunting him while he does awesome Saturday Night Fever dance routines to show how carefree life can be when you don’t think about the Nazis.

And there’s very good reason to think about the Nazis—turns out they’re plotting to do something terrible in a couple weeks, just the latest in an annual list of terrible things they’ve been doing since the end of the war—like assassinating Kennedy.

The episode also shuffles second-billed FBI agent Jerrika Hinton quite a bit. She starts the episode in imminent danger from evil little Nazi hitman Greg Austin, but ends it completely out of that danger and free to go on her expository investigation. She meets up with a fellow FBI agent—Sam Daly (Tim Daly’s kid)—and it seems like it means something, but not really. Just more treading water in her investigation, more exposition drops, then some more of her home life problems. Turns out Hinton’s closest lesbian story arc doesn’t just remind of “Mindhunter,” it directly lifts from it.

There’s some great stuff with Dylan Baker, a fantastic “how to spot a Nazi” public service announcement commercial with Radnor and guest star Hailey Stone (not all White people are Nazis but all Nazis are White people), and some iffy “you’re the Batman in our friend group” reinforcement for Lerman.

So Lerman’s not the lead I was expecting and Hinton’s pretty thankless all things considered, but “Hunters” is still sturdy.

Even if the idea of an open all night comic shop in late seventies Brooklyn is wholly absurd. I could be wrong. But… it seems absurd.

Hunters (2020) s01e02 – The Mourner’s Kaddish

The important series story development this episode is it turns out Logan Lerman isn’t okay with torturing and killing Nazis hiding in the United States. He’s still the same softie as in the first episode when he thought Darth Vader probably wasn’t all evil and didn’t, you know, kill a bunch of little kids in his youth or something. This episode’s Nazi—and that part is the possibly important practical series question, is there going to be a “Nazi target of the week”—but this episode’s Nazi is John Hans Tester. He’s fine, but nothing special. He tries to kill Lerman, just like the last Nazi, only Lerman still isn’t grokking it.

Meanwhile, however, Jerrika Hinton—who’s somehow simultaneously become the show’s most “real” character and the one most seemingly a knock-off of the “Mindhunter” female lead role (Hinton’s got a girlfriend, so she’s a Black lesbian FBI agent in 1977, which is a lot)—anyway, Hinton’s realized the Nazis are still around and they’re still really bad. She has a nice monologue about how Hansel and Gretel is really just a story about how some little German kids robbed and murdered a Jewish woman.

Now, where Hansel and Gretel as great of villains as the Nazis on “Hunters,” which doubles down on giving Dylan Baker some amazing material. Baker’s an unappreciated acting treasure and seeing him (an American) do a German pretending to be an American lying about his not murdering his own family is awe-inspiring.

Now, despite him being so amazing, the show doesn’t give him a peppy theme like it gives evil Nazi boss lady Lena Olin. She’s got theme music. It’s a little weird.

Also this episode has young Nazi Greg Austin threatening children and pregnant women. It makes you feel guilty for enjoying Austin’s performance. You feel seen, admiring what a great psychotic Nazi he can create.

There’s also a very cheap “Tarantino-esque” introduction to the rest of Al Pacino’s “Hunters.” We later find out its how Lerman is processing the things around him. Basically Kate Mulvany, who’s the killer MI-6 nun lady, doesn’t like him but team goof Josh Radnor owes him because of Lerman’s grandma so they’re bros. Pacino doesn’t really take a mentor position but more a concerned family friend one. It’s very interesting to see Pacino in television, even streaming. He’s got lots of energy but very little ambition. He also falls back on his accent for his character when he starts getting too Pacino-y.

It works. Good cast. Especially Carol Kane and Saul Rubinek as the married Qs who do all the tech work.

Mulvany’s an exception, though it’s the script. The balance between the supporting cast is off.

Good music from Cristobal Tapia de Veer. I also noticed the photography is William Rexer (it’s excellent, but it’s also just nice to see him lighting projects people will see).

I had been thinking it’d take the season for Hinton to team up with Pacino and Lerman but it’s seeming like it’s going to happen sooner than later, which is good too. Because, so far, “Hunters” works.

Hunters (2020) s01e01 – In the Belly of the Whale

“Hunters” fully realizes the potential of a popular entertainment revenge action-drama. There’s the Marathon Man-esque scene—not a Nazi dentist scene but a Nazi toy shop owner (a perfect Kenneth Tigar; “Hunters” seems like it’s going to be way too good at casting its Nazis)—but it ends with the good guys killing the evil Nazi bastard. They’re not action hero good guys, they’re not old man action heroes or soulful action heroes.

One of them is Al Pacino, who’s decidedly not a soulful old man action hero, rather a well-fed, lovable, cuddly old man Pacino. And the other is Logan Lerman, who’s almost thirty playing a late teen who looks ever fourteen. He’s a smart, likable, empathetic, bullied, young Jewish man in 1977 Brooklyn.

Lerman, the show lead, is so smart he’s already helped the police solve a case thanks to his passively analytical mind. The likability and empathy has come through in his post-Star Wars screening dissection of Darth Vader’s childhood brainwashing (better idea than reality)–show creator and episode writer David Weil owes a whole bunch to Kevin Smith and Clerks for this kind of onscreen Star Wars dissection (whereas the show owes its whole production aesthetic to Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam).

Lerman’s scene right after he and his friends talking about Star Wars is the girl across the street (Ebony Obsidian) who he’s crushed on forever helping him set up a pot sale only for the buyer, her boyfriend, to kick Lerman’s ass for being Jewish. This attack comes after the opening which has political fixer Dylan Baker being outed as a Nazi and killing his family in suburban Washington D.C.

“Hunters” is a lot and knows it.

Meanwhile, Black female in 1977 FBI agent Jerrika Hinton is off in Florida investigating in a case and finding out her government doesn’t just not want her—a Black woman FBI agent—around even though they hired her around, they’re also covering up a bunch of Nazis in the United States, working for its government.

The episode’s a nice, long, traditional 90-minute pilot. We get Lerman’s origin story with finding out grandma Jeannie Berlin (it’d be nice if she were better) and fellow concentration camp survivor Pacino are amateur septuagenarian Nazi hunters.

They have to do it themselves because the U.S. government doesn’t care (or worse) and because “Hunters” is seemingly going out of its way to mention Israel too much, which is fine… it’s mainstream, inclusive entertainment.

The main Nazis seem to be Dylan Baker—who’s perfect because it’s Dylan Baker and he was born to play a Nazi sleeper cell agent—Lena Olin as Ms. Big, and Greg Austin as the “born in the U.S.A.” Nazi hitman. Austin’s great. It’s too soon to tell with Olin but it’s also not like she’s going to have much to do.

Lerman’s a great lead—even if the episode spends an hour putting him in a holding pattern—Hinton’s good, Pacino’s borderline adorable, and the villains are loathsome. “Hunters” does everything it should do.

The Godfather: Part III (1990, Francis Ford Coppola), the director’s cut

Here’s an all-encompassing theory to explain The Godfather Part III, based only on on-screen evidence (i.e. ignoring production woes, casting woes, rewrites, budget and schedule comprises, and whatever else). Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo hate everyone in the film and everyone who will ever watch the film—maybe Coppola didn’t cast daughter Sofia Coppola in the third lead of the film because he thought she’d be good, but instead because she’d be godawful and make everyone hate the movie, which would just validate Coppola not wanting to make it in the first place. It would also explain the terrible script, full of awful exposition sequences and hackneyed scene after hackneyed scene. Godfather Part III makes Sofia Coppola and Andy Garcia’s star-crossed romance—they’re first cousins—into a fetish. They’ve both got a cousin-smashing fetish. If you want to love Godfather 3, Coppola and Puzo say, you’ve got to love some cousins bumping uglies.

Let’s not even get into when Talia Shire does a jaw drop at Garcia’s useless stud twin bodyguards and then rubs her nephew’s hands suggestively. If Godfather 3 has any subtext, it’s icky. But saying it has subtext is a stretch. Shire seems like she’s just in the movie to wear great clothes. Her performance is utterly atrocious. Of the returning cast members, Shire’s easily the worst. See, there’s nothing good about Godfather Part III. There are no hidden gems in the film. It’s not like secretly Al Pacino gives a good performance if you just ignore the terrible dialogue. It’s not like his eyes give a different performance than his words when he’s trying to rekindle with ex-wife Diane Keaton—in the twenty-one movie years between II and III apparently Pacino decided he didn’t want to raise the kids he stole from Keaton and ships them back to her and then is estranged from the kids somewhat. Keaton’s remarried (to Brett Halsey, who seems to have just met his wife and step-kids in first scene) and Pacino’s seems to have been a baching it, living with bodyguard Richard Bright (who gives the best returning performance) and hanging out with sister Shire. It’s not clear. The first act is really inept as far as establishing the ground situation.

Godfather 3 kind of remixes styles from the previous two movies—it doesn’t seem like Carmine Coppola composes a single new piece of music for the film, just recycles material from the previous ones, as director Coppola just recycles dialogue and scenes. It all echoes, the film bellows: Don’t you remember when you loved this.

But then Coppola and Puzo grossly veer as far as characterization. Pacino doesn’t have a character. He’s got a caricaturization, not even of the character from the previous films, but of himself since then. In really bad make-up. They’re only aging Pacino ten years but the way he dodders around, shuffling, kind of glassy-eyed, it’s like the makeup person was going for seventy-five and stoned. It’s really, really, really hard not to feel bad for Pacino throughout Godfather Part 3. People remember the first one for Brando, the second one for De Niro; here, Pacino gets to be the whole show—or should be—and director Coppola instead gives all the big material to his daughter, who must give one of the worst performances in a film budgeted over fifty million dollars before 1994. It’s humiliating.

Because Pacino’s not terrible. He’s doddering, he’s pretty dense—it’s unbelievable he’s a successful anything, gangster gone businessman or gangster pretending to go businessman—the same goes for Garcia, who goes from driving a car, shooting people, yelling, picking up young girls, then picking up his cousin to being a criminal mastermind. Of course, given the mob plot in this one involves Pacino wanting to buy a huge corporation from the Vatican and the Vatican going to war with Pacino but there’s also something with Joe Mantegna as the mob guy Pacino gave the old neighborhood. Mantegna and Garcia hate each other. Garcia’s Pacino’s illegitimate nephew (and if you’re expecting a great Pacino blow-up scene after Gracia seduces Sofia Coppola, dream on; though at least Pacino disapproves, Keaton’s all for the first cousin—they bring it up to confirm–smashing). Eli Wallach plays an old mob friend who somehow wasn’t in the first two movies even though he obviously should’ve been; he’s got an agenda of his own. If you’ve seen the second movie you can figure it out pretty quick because they use the same music cues.

Speaking of the second movie, evidently the reason Pacino’s a big sweetheart now is because he feels so bad about killing his brother in the second movie. Coppola rolls that footage in the first ten minutes of the movie, clearly it’s important. Only it’s not because Pacino hasn’t got enough character for it to affect anything. Wait, wait, it does. I forgot: Franc D’Ambrosio. D’Ambrosio is Keaton and Pacino’s other kid (sadly, no, he and Garcia don’t bang too). The reason Keaton comes back into Pacino’s orbit is because she wants to support D’Ambrosio dropping out of law school to become an opera singer. See, D’Ambrosio knows Pacino had his favorite uncle killed in the last movie and wants nothing to do with him. Except in all those scenes where he hugs Pacino and tells him how much he loves him and how much he wants Pacino’s approval and blah blah blah. Until the last twenty minutes, it’s hard to get too worked up about Sofia Coppola’s performance because for as terrible as she gets, D’Ambrosio is just as bad. Coppola looked at Keaton and Pacino—who actually dated back on the second movie—and decided if they had kids, those children would grow up to give terrible performances in the worst sequel (compared to previous entries) of all time.

The complete disconnect between D’Ambrosio’s first scene and every subsequent one? It gets to be a natural feeling in Godfather 3. A lot of scenes feel reshot, even if they’re not. Like maybe Keaton and Pacino weren’t really on set at the same time for this one. Same goes for Sofia Coppola and Andy Garcia. They’ve got a couple scenes where it really doesn’t seem like they’re talking to anyone else. It’s hard to tell, because Coppola directs the film like a TV show. Instead of doing a two shot in a conversation, he’ll cut between close-ups. It’s really, really, really bad composition. Like so much in the film, it’s embarrassing.

So Pacino’s greatest success is not appearing visibly humiliated. Keaton just seems defeated. She’s terrible. The writing on her character is real bad. All the writing on characters is real bad. But Keaton is way more in Shire territory than not.

Garcia’s okay. Sort of. It’s not his fault. Also the James Caan impression stuff is stupid.

Sofia Coppola’s performance is singularly terrible. Can’t be repeated enough.

Oh, right. The supporting cast. Besides George Hamilton, who has squat to do in the film, everyone is pretty bad. Hamilton’s not good, but he at least seems excited to be in a Godfather movie. He shows up and tries. Mantegna and Wallach don’t try. Wallach just gets worse the more he’s onscreen. The Vatican Eurotrash villains—Donal Donnelly and Enzo Robutti—they’re awful too. But for different reasons. Coppola doesn’t really bother directing the actors. He must be too busy setting up terrible shots, which all have variously poor establishing shots. Gordon Willis’s photography is something dreadful, but it’s impossible to blame him. Somehow it’s got to be Coppola’s fault.

So what’s left… Bridget Fonda? She’s got an extended cameo to get in some male gaze. She’s not good. But she’s nowhere near as problematic as anyone else, even Richard Bright, just because she’s not in the movie long enough to get worse scenes. The longer you’re in Godfather 3, the worse your scenes get. Except maybe D’Ambrosio, who frequently gets completely forgotten because no one cares. He’s not banging Garcia, after all.

The scary part is it could be even worse. You can just tell. Coppola could have made an even worse film.

There is one nearly good scene in the film where Coppola lets Pacino try to feel out an honest emotion. It seems like it ought to be a scene in a film called The Godfather Part III. None of the other ones do. The rest of it feels like Puzo and Coppola really wanted to do a Vatican conspiracy thriller and shoehorned in the Corleone Family, with the cousin sex for dessert.

I don’t loathe Godfather 3, I just dread it. Every one of the 170 minutes after the first just promise something else dreadful.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992, James Foley)

The first half of Glengarry Glen Ross is phenomenal. David Mamet’s screenplay is lightning fast during this section, moving its characters around, pairing them off for scenes or moments–the brevity is astounding. Half the movie is over and it feels like just a few minutes. Then the second half hits and the pace is still good, but the energy is different. It meanders. Apparently the only thing keeping director Foley going was having different locations and different camera setups–many questionably framed for pan and scan; in the second half of the film, set entirely on one set, Glengarry Glen Ross starts to fizzle. The actors keep it viable for as long as they can, but then it becomes clear Foley’s just composing for one actor, one performance, not all the actors, all the performances. The film never solidifies and it’s so fast, it’s almost over before it becomes clear Foley’s not going to bring it together. He instead relies on James Newton Howard’s peppy smooth jazz score. It’s never a good idea to rely on smooth jazz, peppy or not.

Every performance in Glengarry Glen Ross is outstanding. Foley’s problem isn’t giving the actors time to act, he does fine with that aspect of his directing. Sure, even in the first half, he isn’t directing their scenes perfectly, but he’s definitely giving them room to act. Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, Jonathan Pryce, Alec Baldwin. They’re all great. Pryce and Baldwin don’t have particularly great parts, but they’re great. Baldwin gets a big speech, which he nails. Pacino, Lemmon, Harris and Spacey get the meatier parts (Spacey the least, Harris and Pacino just through force). Lemmon’s the lead for most of the film. Only not so in the second half, which Mamet might be able to cover if Foley knew how to stage the second half. He avoids doing an adaptation of the play–Glengarry Glen Ross was a play first, also by Mamet–for the first half, only to be forced into it in the second half and have no idea how to do it. Arkin doesn’t get much meat, but he still turns in a great performance. The performances are impeccable.

And impeccable performances, along with strong dialogue, keep the film going for quite a while. There aren’t even any danger signs until Harris and Arkin’s subplot in the first half, when Howard E. Smith’s editing seems to be elongating and distracting their conversations instead of curating and appreciating them. Glengarry Glen Ross isn’t a mystery. There’s a mystery in it–sort of–and Foley stumbles when trying to integrate it. All the humanity in the film is from its actors essaying the screenplay. None of it comes from the filmmaking itself, which is a big problem.

Again, Pacino, Lemmon and Harris are all phenomenal. None of them have great characters to work with–they have some great material, but not great characters. As an example of excellent acting, Glengarry Glen Ross works. As a film? Not so much.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by James Foley; screenplay by David Mamet, based on his play; director of photography, Juan Ruiz Anchía; edited by Howard E. Smith; music by James Newton Howard; production designer, Jane Musky; produced by Stanley R. Zupnik and Jerry Tokofsky; released by New Line Cinema.

Starring Al Pacino (Ricky Roma), Jack Lemmon (Shelley Levene), Alec Baldwin (Blake), Alan Arkin (George Aaronow), Ed Harris (Dave Moss), Kevin Spacey (John Williamson) and Jonathan Pryce (James Lingk).

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Serpico (1973, Sidney Lumet)

There’s a strange disconnect between director Lumet and actor Al Pacino on Serpico. The film, at least in how Pacino plays it, is a character study. Yes, it’s a character study of someone in a great deal of transition–Pacino’s cop, over twelve rather poorly paced years, goes from idealism to resignation at the corruption he encounters–but it’s still a character study. Pacino’s performance is all about how his character is changing. It’s an amazing performance.

But Lumet presents Serpico as something of a shortened epic. It runs just over two hours, which really isn’t enough for the epic study of political machinations and indifference, especially not since the first hour deals with Pacino becoming a hippie. The hippie stuff is practically enough for its own movie and is where Lumet seems to want to go with that character study feel.

And the first half has this sweeping music from Mikis Theodorakis, sometimes overwhelming the dialogue. The second half, when Serpico is all about the police corruption stuff (and it does move better in this half), is missing the music. It’s missing the lyricism. Instead, it’s all grit, which Lumet can do and do well–though Arthur J. Ornitz’s outdoor photography is nowhere near as good as his indoor–but there’s nothing to it. Pacino’s still going through this transformation, but no one else is along for the ride.

Excellent supporting turns from Barbara Eda-Young, John Randolph, Tony Roberts.

The film just doesn’t live up to Pacino’s performance.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Sidney Lumet; screenplay by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler, based on the book by Peter Maas; director of photography, Arthur J. Ornitz; edited by Richard Marks and Dede Allen; music by Mikis Theodorakis; production designer, Charles Bailey; produced by Martin Bregman; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Al Pacino (Serpico), John Randolph (Sidney Green), Jack Kehoe (Tom Keough), Biff McGuire (Captain McClain), Barbara Eda-Young (Laurie), Cornelia Sharpe (Leslie) and Tony Roberts (Bob Blair).

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Heat (1995, Michael Mann)

Until the final scene, director Mann is still carefully plotting out Heat. The film’s narrative construction–when he introduces a character, when he returns to a character, how he transitions from one character to another–is magnificent. Heat is a delicate film, with Mann never letting a single element carry a scene. He’s always working in combination–sound and actor, photography and sound, editing and actors. All of these elements should cause distance between the viewer and the film; instead they bring the viewer in closer.

Much of the film deals with the relationship between the various men and their suffering women. Even if one of the male characters’ women doesn’t know she’s suffering, she’s going be soon. Mann posits his driven male characters are unable to function in relationships, then he explores the relationship between the driven male characters.

With crooks Val Kilmer and Robert De Niro, Mann sets up something near a protege and mentor relationship. With De Niro and cop Al Pacino, Mann goes with an alter ego. The scene between Pacino and De Niro, where Pacino finally gets to let down his guard–up almost entirely in the rest of the film–is startling. It’s an island in the chaos.

Great supporting performances from Amy Brenneman, Diane Venora, Dennis Haysbert, Mykelti Williamson and Kevin Gage. Brenneman’s the closest thing Heat has to a sympathetic character. Everyone else is just extant.

Nearly three hours, Heat never gets unwieldy. Mann’s deliberateness keeps it painfully, depressingly, beautifully, devastatingly subdued.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975, Sidney Lumet)

Besides Al Pacino, there are other actors in Dog Day Afternoon. Some of them give fantastic performances too. But, even with those fantastic performances, every time Pacino is alone on screen, whether closeup or not, monologue or not, it feels like there’s no one else in the film besides him. He doesn’t command it or walk away with it… the film’s his performance and his performance is the film, right down to the last scene.

Some of the other particularly fantastic performances are, in no particular order, John Cazale, Penelope Allen, James Broderick, Charles Durning and Chris Sarandon. Okay, maybe I saved Sarandon for last so I don’t forget to mention the specifics. I had no idea it was Sarandon in the film. Never would I have imaged he could have given such a good performance (it was his first major film work).

Cazale’s sturdy. He’s great without being exceptional–the performance isn’t a surprise. Pacino, as good as he can be, is still a surprise here. He’s not in a movie star role and Pacino almost always does those (or has been since Dog Day); I’d forgotten the greatness of his performance here. It’s been… maybe fifteen years since I last saw the film. Since then, he’s been in a lot of lousy movies to cloud my memory.

I think this time is the first I’ve seen Dog Day Afternoon in its original aspect ratio. Lumet’s direction is so sublimely perfect, I can’t believe he doesn’t have more admirers.

The Recruit (2003, Roger Donaldson)

There’s a very interesting throwaway line in The Recruit. During the traitor’s confession, there’s an implication the betrayal occurred following the CIA ignoring information they could have used to prevent 9/11. Like everything related to 9/11, it’s all implied (this one is less obvious than the others), but it’s definitely there. Given the film seems like a fairytale “young CIA” movie–the “Beverly Hills 90210” approach to it–it implies there was once a more mature film here (are CIA training procedures a matter of public record? I’m pretty sure not).

The top billed Al Pacino is doing one of his standard wizened older (not old) man roles here. He yells a little. His eyes occasionally gleam, reminding of better roles. What’s bothersome about Pacino’s paycheck roles (which he mostly does now, just like De Niro), is he’s still likable (something De Niro never had). I resent myself for enjoying his performance.

Colin Farrell is doing a leading man role–at times it’s impossible not to think of Tom Cruise in The Firm–and he’s solid. Sometimes his job is just to stare intently, other times he does actually act. He and Pacino work well together but, even the Recruit is her best performance I’ve seen, Farrell doesn’t really get anything to work with from Bridget Moynahan. But at least her performance wasn’t making me nauseous like usual.

When the movie’s decent, it fits Donaldson would be making it. When it’s not, he’s way too good for it.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Roger Donaldson; written by Roger Towne, Kurt Wimmer and Mitch Glazer; director of photography, Stuart Dryburgh; edited by David Rosenbloom; music by Klaus Badelt; production designer, Andrew McAlpine; produced by Roger Birnbaum, Jeff Apple and Gary Barber; released by Touchstone Pictures.

Starring Al Pacino (Walter Burke), Colin Farrell (James Douglas Clayton), Bridget Moynahan (Layla Moore), Gabriel Macht (Zack), Kenneth Mitchell (Alan) and Mike Realba (Ronnie Gibson).

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Righteous Kill (2008, Jon Avnet)

I don’t know when I first realized De Niro and Pacino had never been in a movie together (really together)–it was long before Heat; their pairing doesn’t exactly seem obvious (both were always leading men), but something about their acting pedigree just made it seem natural. For example, Pacino’s never made a film with Scorsese and nothing feels off about it. Righteous Kill is a kind of passive movie event, thirteen years after Heat, thirty-four after The Godfather: Part II. Is there a reason for another pairing? No. Does anything substantive come out of this one? No. Is there a good reason for using rhetorical questions? Well, I’m trying to stay positive.

The big problem with Righteous Kill is the script. Russell Gewirtz manages a surprise ending–one very similar, actually, in form to his Inside Man ending–but there’s nothing in between. The perfect screenwriter for Kill is, as I think about it, Richard Price. He would have done the aging detective (something Gewirtz avoids in one of the script’s stupider moves), he would have done the New York setting (something else Gewirtz avoids–I’m amazed none of the movie shot in Canada), and he would have done an actual mystery. Gewirtz’s trick ending depends on a narrative with a constant absence of suspense (Jon Avnet being a wonderful directorial accomplice for that feature). The trick ending’s kind of neat, the way Gewirtz pulls it off and all, but it’s still a hollow gimmick ending. The movie has no meat to it, which might be the point. Righteous Kill was rumored to be headed straight-to-DVD and there’s nothing about it, past the leads, to make it special. Avnet shoots it 2.35:1, but it’s Super 35… so they could have just as easily printed it for anamorphic DVD.

With the script so failing–it’s amusing in parts, but most of my time was spent trying to imagine how I’d experience if they’d just told a straight story–there’s not much the cast can do with it. De Niro phones in his typical performance and Pacino phones in his. They’re in the same room, both on the phone at the same time, but there’s no reference to their pairing and the novelty of it. Had they referenced Godfather and Heat, at least the self-awareness would earn them some slack. Of the two, Pacino has more visible fun. De Niro’s can’t hide his boredom.

The supporting cast, which seems great, really isn’t. Carla Gugino is goofy in the kind of role she always plays now. Both John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg are good. Brian Dennehy doesn’t work, mostly for the same age problems De Niro and Pacino have… it’s never believable these guys are still just detectives. The movie doesn’t acknowledge their age.

Alan Rosenberg shows up for a second and is, unfortunately, unimpressive. In a similarly small role, Melissa Leo is good. Trilby Glover is good in a small part… but Gewirtz neglects the character after a while.

With the last Pacino and Avnet pairing–88 Minutes–I bemoaned the state of Pacino’s career (I just hadn’t been seeing enough of his recent stuff, I’m sure). Righteous Kill will now be another bewildering entry on both he and De Niro’s filmographies. I keep thinking it should have been good (or better), but maybe not. Pacino and De Niro as old cops… eh.

If Price was busy, what about Mamet? Mamet could have directed too.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Jon Avnet; written by Russell Gewirtz; director of photography, Denis Lenoir; edited by Paul Hirsch; music by Ed Shearmur; production designer, Tracey Gallacher; produced by Avnet, Avi Lerner, Boaz Davidson, Randall Emmett, Daniel M. Rosenberg, Alexandra Milchan, Rob Cowan and Lati Grobman; released by Overture Films.

Starring Robert De Niro (Turk), Al Pacino (Rooster), Curtis Jackson (Spider), Carla Gugino (Karen Corelli), John Leguizamo (Detective Perez), Donnie Wahlberg (Detective Riley), Brian Dennehy (Lieutenant Hingis), Trilby Glover (Jessica), Saidah Arrika Ekulona (Gwen Darvis), Alan Rosenberg (Stein), Sterling K. Brown (Rogers), Barry Primus (Prosky), Melissa Leo (Cheryl Brooks), Alan Blumenfeld (Martin Baum) and Oleg Taktarov (Yevgeny Mugalat).

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