De Niro and Pacino fail to make another hit with 'Righteous Kill'

'Righteous Kill' is a letdown after previous hits by De Niro and Pacino.

By Adam Daniels

Published Sept. 18, 2008

Midway through "Righteous Kill," Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are discussing this serial killer case with their captain and a bantering metaphor between the two ensues that parallels their pursuit of this killer to the end of Ted Williams' 1941 baseball season.

You see, Williams was hitting .400 going into his last game of the season. His manager, realizing the historic relevance of such a statistic, wanted to bench Williams to protect the record. Williams, however, wanted to throw caution to the wind and play. Fuck playing it safe, dude was a Marine. Williams ends up having a monster day (6 for 8) and batted .406 for the year. He's the last player to bat .400 for a season. This proves that Pacino and De Niro shouldn't shy away from the case just because it might tarnish their legacy and pension.

The metaphor is well executed in the film, but one can't help but carry it into reality. Pacino and De Niro are legendary in crime films, so the obvious point is Pacino and De Niro were collectively batting around .400 within the genre (given the recent slide after Pacino's unfortunate "88 Minutes" ordeal) before this film. But "Righteous Kill" was far from a 6-for-8 day at the plate. Even after the free passes the two of them deserve at this point, we're still left wondering what about this film brought these two superpowers together.

The end result felt much more like another sports analogy De Niro used to describe his life philosophy later in the film: an infield fly. If your eyes get caught in the sun after it leaves the bat, it might look promising as it soars high in the air. But ultimately, it's just a lot of hot air that ends up coming down somewhere between the mound and second base. Technically, the shortstop doesn't even have to get under it to catch it. The entire event has changed but one mere column on the scoreboard.

The film, a buddy-cop police scandal film in which New York City cops take the law into their own hands after growing tired of the system, can feel like a greatest hits of sorts for the two legends. It's full of recycled plotlines and devices the two should have considered decades ago.

The film didn't seem to suffer from any one notable shortcoming. It simply lacked the gusto the cast is capable of. The dialogue feels forced and clichéd, and so much of the film is dedicated to a central point of misdirection that seemed largely solvable fairly early through the film. Most of all, nobody played crazy in this film. This doesn't mean somebody has to go off in every film De Niro, Pacino or John Leguizamo do, but for God's sake, aside from possibly Jack Nicholson, nobody plays crazy like Pacino. And this was a slightly over-the-top cop drama about the system getting to you. They could have at least thrown in a glazed mid-bender monologue or something.

Most any other pair of actors would have made the film seem like a watchable action flick that even slipped into the realm of enjoyable when you stopped asking questions. There were hard-ass cops, street justice and 50 Cent playing himself without a hat. What's not to love? But the movie ultimately feels like a waste of talent.

Always a showman, Ted Williams homered in the last at-bat of his career in 1960. Thankfully, Pacino and De Niro still have that chance despite this film.