Righteous Kill (2008)

[DartanganMcgee 30]

What can be said for this sad, sad attempt at filmmaking. Between Pacino's high heel shoe lifts, and the convoluted storyline, this film is a disaster. It just leaves you feeling depressed, two actors that have been in some truly great films, are now relegated to this kind of garbage.

[Nasher 29]

A very fair call indeed.. terrible movie seemingly of two rambling and confused old men who, for some reason, refuse to share the screen together (and have to be poorly photoshopped to appear in close proximity on the cover) heel-drag their way through utter pointless schlock. You just end-up wanting both of them getting shot.

[DartanganMcgee 30]

Yeah, apparently Pacino and Deniro both left ten minutes into the premiere, even they couldn't watch this piece of dog shit.

[DartanganMcgee 30]

I think this one deserves another look, so terrible.

[Shannon 2953]

OMG I saw this movie after Hurricane Ike, there was no power in my town for 10 days and on day 4 my whole apartment of bored college kids decided to drive to the closest town with power and eat dinner and see a movie. We drove 2 hours and saw Righteous Kill.

 

When discussing Devil's Advocate with my bf the other night I was trying desperately to remember the name of this film, and I do remember exactly three things about it.

 

1) Gratuitous De Niro sex scenes that hurt my brain.

2) 50 Cent.

3) Some kind of twist ending that I didn't see coming but I can not remember what that was now.

[DartanganMcgee 30]

I started thinking about this right after devil's advocate as well. And, yeah, the De Niro sex scenes were unforgivable. I wanted to rinse out my mind. The terrible twist you're thinking of involved the reveal that Pacino was the vigilante killer, I remember his motivations were beyond retarded. Then I remember De Niro ends up killing Pacino, and as he's dying he gives some contrived corny speech about De Niro being a righteous man, it's such horse shit. I feel like they thought they had to end it with De Niro killing Pacino as a not so clever juxtaposition to Heat.

[DartanganMcgee 30]

[RyanSz 3140]

The twist (besides the killer obviously being Pacino) is that they revealed that twist by finally revealing the characters' names. The whole movie they called each other Turk and Rooster and while De Niro states his name as one guy which the audience is to believe is his taped confession, is actually him reading Pacino's therapy journal where he wrote his confession. The only good thing about this movie is that Rob Dyrdek got shot in the head.

 

Also, let's not forget that De Niro's girlfriend who is also a cop is raped by Pacino, but their Lieutenant is covering for him for unknown reasons.

[DartanganMcgee 30]

Haha, I forgot about the demise of rob dyrdek, that was the highlight of the movie. Btw, dyrdek and 50 cent, who the fuck cast this movie!? Yeah, it's a pretty convoluted plot. And thanks, I was having trouble remembering the exact details of the ending, but I remember I wasn't impressed. I also have to point out Pacino's high heel lifts, which are noticable in a couple of scenes. He probably had to stand on a milk crate in his scenes with Carla Gugino.

[pscudese 701]

amazing

[DartanganMcgee 30]

I'd say the fact that Pacino and De Niro's agents still have jobs is pretty amazing.

[SlidePocket 707]

This was also directed by the guy (Jon Avnet) who previously worked with Pacino on none other than 88 Minutes!

[RyanSz 3140]

Yeah from casting Donny Wahlberg, John Leguizamo, 50 Cent, and Brian Dennehey, it almost seems they mad-libbed the rest of the cast after casting Pacino and De Niro.

 

I imagine it going like this:

 

Producer 1: Hey producer 2 who should we cast as the tough Boston-y detective to rival the leads?

Producer 2: Well there is the Wahlbergs Chris Evans, or maybe James Spader.

Producer 1: Okay how about that cop's minority partner who's a smartass?

Producer 2: Well there's Leguizamo, Chris Rock, or even Chris Tucker.

Producer 1: Alright, and lastly we need a rapper to play a gangster/club owner.

Producer 2: Well that's easy, it's either 50 Cent or P Diddy.

 

And if I remember right, Pacino started the killings because De Niro had planted evidence on a guy, giving him a life sentence, because they couldn't get him any other way. Because Pacino looked up to De Niro as a truly by-the-book cop who always wanted to do the right thing, this crushed him and caused him to take the law into his own hands.

[WayneMiller 37]

British movie critic and all-round cool-dude Mark Kermode refers to this movie as "Wrongtious Kill". He's not wrong.

[nthurkettle 148]

When I saw all the scenes of DeNiro and Pacino strutting around, pumping iron and beating up punks and swaggering about how great they are, I remember thinking "This script was probably written for guys like 30 years younger than you, because you're both like 70 and this is absurd."