Righteous Kill.

"Oh, if only Robert Aldrich were alive!" exclaims Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "The pulpmeister of the horror lollapalooza What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? certainly knew how to build a grand showcase for his corrugated divas (Bette Davis and Joan Crawford), while the hapless Jon Avnet hasn't a clue what to do with his (Al Pacino and Robert De Niro). In Righteous Kill these two godheads of 1970s cinema go macho-a-macho with each other - furrowing brows, bellowing lines, looking alternately grimly serious and somewhat bemused - in a B-movie (more like C-minus) duet that probably sounded like a grand idea when their handlers whispered it in their ears."

Updated through 9/14.

"The novelty of watching De Niro and Pacino team up wears off pretty quickly," warns Keith Phipps at the AV Club. "These men probably still have great performances left in them, but they look silly trading Quentin Tarantino-inspired riffs on Underdog - a cartoon they probably wouldn't have been watching when they were twentysomethings, when it first aired - and roughing up suspects like 50 Cent (credited as Curtis Jackson), as if engaged in a two-man war on the young."

"Thankfully, even though the film's script, by Inside Man writer Russell Gewirtz, plays to the cheap seats, Mr Pacino keeps his post-Scarface tendency toward implosive, bizarrely out-of-touch histrionics under wraps - at least, until the last reel," writes Bruce Bennett in the New York Sun. "Mr De Niro, who has lately squandered his somber on-screen gravitas by appearing frozen in the same strained, wincing, dyspeptic semi-smirk whether playing in a comedy or a drama, for the most part remains nearly expressionless.... In their primes, Messrs De Niro and Pacino could have played these parts in their sleep. Now well out of their prime, they appear in some scenes in Righteous Kill to be doing just that."

"At least these two aging virtuosi of the Method don't altogether submit to the temptation of mailing in their performances," offers Gene Seymour in the Los Angeles Times. "And they seem comfortable enough in each other's company on-screen to make you wish there were more scenes that allowed them to just kick back and riff. It'd be a lot more enjoyable than watching the movie strain for clarity - or cleverness."

"[T]his serial killer thriller and rabidly macho buddy cop caper bristles with conflicted ambitions toward making something that's both smart and base, a genre work for the sleaze-hungry and the beard-strokers alike," writes Josef Braun in the Vue Weekly. "I'm actually impressed how relatively well it works, even if it all inevitably evaporates under the heat of its own sketchy conceit."

"[T]here's a lot more to these two performers than barely concealed rage, well-wrought angst and occasional bouts of scenery munching." At Bullz-Eye, Bob Westal lists "20 of their more obscure performances showing that, thespian demigods or not, these two guys from New York City are also two versatile entertainers."

Online viewing tip. The Guardian has a couple of minutes with De Niro and Pacino and everybody else. Junket stuff, but hey.

Updates, 9/13: "[T]his is a film that missed its moment," argues Richard Corliss in Time. "Instead of the meeting of maestros at the top of their form, Righteous Kill has the feeling of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds facing off for the first time in an exhibition game. It's like Old Timers' Day at the Motion Picture Home."

Nick Schager in Slant: "Unlike Heat, which cannily amplified tension by keeping the stars apart, De Niro and Pacino here share countless scenes together but don't develop anything more than a clichéd cop-duo rapport, due in part to an ungainly script light on taut sequences and overstuffed with clunky red herrings - like De Niro giving bad-girl lover Gugino the rough sex she needs, which means he must be a violent nutcase! - that are made more graceless by Jon Avnet's direction."

Online viewing tip. De Niro and Pacino read off the "Top 10 Reasons I Like Being an Actor" for David Letterman. At Defamer, via Movie City News.

Update, 9/14: "It's not that Righteous Kill is despicably awful - and heck, compared to 88 Minutes, Pacino's previous collaboration with director Jon Avnet, it's a work of art - but the movie is so dreadfully by-the-numbers and predictable that comparing it to a TV cop show would be an insult to TV cop shows," writes Alonso Duralde at MSNBC.

Posted by dwhudson at September 12, 2008 6:31 AM