The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

Righteously boring new film kills expectations

Righteous KillJohn Avnet(Lion’s Gate)1.5 StarsChances are most of UVM’s student body have seen the previews for some awesome looking new crime movie with both Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. Many prob?ably thought, like every other member of the media and general public, that this pairing could not possibly go wrong and would hopefully snap their recent cold streaks at the box office and make for a great movie. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this is most definitely not the case.Instead, “Righteous Kill” is a meandering, melodramatic, poorly scripted and over acted waste of talent. The root of the problem lies in the often-atrocious script, which delivers line after stupid line of sarcastic banter between the leading men that is just not funny. The film also provides the most one-dimensional of characters, giving them cliché nicknames like “Turk” and “Rooster,” and repeatedly trying to give them some emotional depth. The sad truth is that neither of the two big names does much with the material given, overplaying themselves and never moving beyond their aging detective archetypes. On the subject of age, a couple of younger actors would have gone a long way to improve the plausibility of some of this – at a certain point in the film it’s hard to take these two 60-something guys working out in the gym seriously. The soundtrack doesn’t help the movie, either. In fact, the 30 second clip of “Sympathy for the Devil” used in the trailer is a more effective piece of music than the entire overly dramatic score which would seem more at home in a horror movie.The shame about this disaster is that the basic premise is not a bad idea and the script eventually does pack a bit of a punch, only to surround it with some of the worst dialogue imaginable. “Righteous Kill” is a good concept that is merely poorly executed on almost every level and could have been aided by some serious revision. Save the $4 and catch it on TNT within the year.

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Righteously boring new film kills expectations