Righteous Kill: Reviewed by A Guy Who Never Even Saw the Flick

I don’t know what the big deal is with all the hype surrounding the pairing of these two former screen tough guys. Both were pretty young when they were in the “Godfather II” together, long before they developed the kind of bad habits that landed them in a film like this. They generated marginally more heat than two wet sticks being rubbed together when they appeared in “Heat”, but this time, they couldn’t even get a fire going with a BIC lighter and a gallon of gasoline. I could see this ending coming a mile away…and I didn’t even SEE the flick. But, I’ve seen the trailers, listened to the voice-overs and recall the catch phrase: “Some people respect the law, but everyone respects the gun.” Yeah, well nobody respects a rip-off.

What we have here are two jaded, veteran actors playing two jaded, veteran cops who just won’t retire. Sound familiar? Well, it should, and if you insert original names like “Turk” and “Rooster”, you’ve got a regurgitated script that tries to pass itself off as original. The plot? Well, I don’t know if you can really call it a “plot”, but the premise is Turk is under investigation for going all Death-Wish-Charles- Bronson-Style on some street scum that have escaped the justice system. Meanwhile, Rooster is misdirecting the audience under the guise of backing up his long-time partner. But, you can see the butler did it before you’re halfway through this Robitussin fueled thriller. At first I thought it was Curtis Jackson a.k.a. 50 Cent, but they didn’t use give him near enough to do in this flick for that to be the case. So by the process of elimination, it became obvious the real shooter was…aw, come on, you already know.

I love these guys, but rather than being dragged through a by-the-numbers plot, punctuated by standard misdirection and false leads, I think I’d rather watch one of their old flicks instead. If you can imagine what a botched up mess a script for “A Taxi Driver Named Serpico” would have been back in the 70’s, do not walk, but RUN away from any theater showing this unholy union. We’re not talking “The Usual Suspects” here, and after the “Dark Knight”, you couldn’t destroy enough sets for this movie to jack up our endorphins past, “mundane”. I suppose at the end, you could discover that Turk was really dead, or that Soylent Green was people, but somehow I doubt it. Not only do I not know whodunit, but I don’t give a f**k. That’s why I didn’t even bother to see the flick. Still, I give it two bug-squishing thumbs down on general principle and the remote possibility that it might contain scenes of nudity involving one or both of the stars. And that just ain’t right.