Film Review: Righteous Kill

ANY film with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in the two leading roles is always going to guarantee some excellent on-screen business being carried out, and on that front, Righteous Kill certainly does not disappoint.
The chemistry between the two icons of the silver screen, teaming up for only the second time in their careers, is very strong from the beginning, and remains so throughout.
By way of contrast, the plot is something of a letdown and the aforementioned 'business' on show is carelessly frittered away.
The film begins with a botched wire-tap on a drug-dealing club owner (50 Cent), which results in the officers in charge of the string, Turk (De Niro) and Rooster (Pacino), being referred to a therapist by their lieutenant.
From there, a story of vigilantism begins to unfold. A serial killer with a penchant for poetry is taking out the remorseless and wrongly acquitted criminals of the city – often perpetrators of emotive crimes such as rape and child murder.
The killer is being closely followed by the veteran team of Turk and Rooster, as well as Detectives Perez and Riley (played by the excellent John Leguizamo and the less convincing Donnie Wahlberg respectively), and it isn't long before tensions run high and fingers are pointed at those within the police department itself.
To reveal any further detail would blow the whole thing wide open, although the ending is nowhere near as big a surprise as the film's creators would have you believe, but I will simply say there is more to the story than a straightforward eye-for-an-eye plotline.
On the whole, the film is by no means terrible and there is enough here to please even the most ardent of movie cynics, although there is a strong argument for the recent career paths of De Niro and Pacino to be called into question, given their willingness to appear alongside the likes of 50 Cent and Donnie Wahlberg!