Movie Review: Righteous Kill

SPOILER WARNING!!!

So I found myself at a movie theatre last night. Lots of options available, well respected films by fantastic filmmakers like Burn After Reading, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. So what did I decide to see? Righteous Kill! Yeah, I got to the theatre a bit late, and that was the only movie where I wouldn't have missed a huge chunk.

So when I got into the actual screening room, I had missed a bit. Even though the movie was only ~3 minutes in, it felt like it was at the midpoint of the story, and i'm quite sure I missed some important information at the start.

So i'm previously on the record for thinking Righteous Kill is the type of movie that never should've been made, thus I went into the theatre with incredibly low expectations, moreorless expecting 88 Minutes: The Sequel (176 Minutes?). Wow, was I floored.

This movie is actually surprisingly quite good! Maybe 'quite good' isn't the actual level of quality that it is on. Considering how shitty I was expecting it to be, add 'quite good', it equals out to around 'decent' in the end. But yeah, who knew this movie would've been event DECENT?!??!

There's nothing really spectacular in this film. Pacino and De Niro are definietly washed up and showing it, they're more or less just in it for the money, going through their paces, but at least putting some effort into it to make it worth our while. John Leguizamo is in this movie and I swear the moment I saw him, I knew this movie wasn't going to be a piece of shit. I love Legumes!!

So the beginning (or was that the middle?) and the middle parts of the movie are 'good'. Nothing 'amazing', but again nothing exceptionally shitty, which was surprising. And oh boy do I love being surprised. It's a very solid crime/thriller kinda storyline, everything is very realistic unto it's world, nothing too different, sticks to the script and does it well.

The real gold comes at the ending. It was pretty convoluted and over-written at times, which is quite unfortunate as if it was cleaned up a bit with a few adjustments, it would've actually propelled this movie into 'very good' territory. But nonetheless, it finishes off the movie very nicely, which is a hard find nowadays.

Given that I initially thought this would be 3 thumbs down, I'm delighted to give it 1 thumb up. If you're looking to blow some money, this will be a pleasant surprise.