Other than the immediate appeal of seeing Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino on screen together for the first time since Heat in 1995, there is very little special or interesting about Righteous Kill. And it’s too bad because there are elements of the movie that are so good and so fitting for each of them (like DeNiro grinning and threatening a child molester on his way out of the courtroom on a technicality) that it’s clear that the movie has a lot of what it takes to be a much better thriller.

DeNiro and Pacino play two veteran NYPD detectives who have been friends and partners for about as long as either of them can remember. Their latest case is lifted right out of The Boondock Saints - a vigilante killer who is systematically killing off violent criminals who have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system. This is, of course, a highly appealing premise - there are few things quite as satisfying as seeing a murderer or rapist or child molester getting shot at point blank range and then a four-line poem tossed onto their chest rhyming out the justification for their death. Well, it’s satisfying to see in a movie anyway. To be perfectly honest, I’m not all that into seeing anyone get shot in real life, poem or not.

But sadly, the movie falls completely flat in its handling of the mystery of who the real killer is. There is a strong implication early in the movie (from the first frame, as it were) that the killer is one of the two main detectives, and there are two other detectives, played by Donnie Wahlberg and John Leguizamo, who are also working the case and increasingly develop the same suspicions.

But there is a cheap method of maintaining tension and dramatic tension that lower level thrillers and mystery movies use, which is to plainly and deliberately lead the audience in the wrong direction before wildly swinging the plot around like a carnival ride near the end. Righteous Kill gives us clues that seem so obvious that they appear to be storytelling techniques rather than plot points, but it’s no use here to try to figure out the mystery, just try to enjoy the ride. Clever moviegoers will see through the constant misdirection like grandma’s underpants, as Bart Simpson would say, but any predictability is based on seeing through cheap film techniques, not figuring out an intricate story.

Al Pacino tries to calm Robert DeNiro down from the shock of realizing that 50 Cent is this much bigger than him.

And most of the ride is enjoyable. There’s more talk than I like in an action thriller starring two of the biggest badasses in movie history, but the story never drags despite being so thin on substance. Curtis Jackson gives a pretty good performance as basically himself, a recording artist/nightclub owner/designer drug dealer (hopefully that last part is fiction) who becomes the focus of Detectives Turk and Rooster’s (DeNiro and Pacino) latest case.

But there are two conflicting stories going on here - there is the story of the two detectives trying to figure out who this killer is that’s killing off the people that the judicial system is too dumb to catch, and the story of us trying to figure out where the plot is going, because the movie presents itself as though it hands us the answer at the beginning and we have to figure something else out. There is some tension generated by other detectives getting closer to what we think is the truth, but don’t go assuming you know all the answers just because you’re told at the start of the film.

John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg react to the news that they will not receive top billing.

Director John Avnet also directed a recent action thriller starring Al Pacino called 88 Minutes, which was something of a critical disaster, not the least reason for which was because of its highly disappointing ending. Similarly, he doesn’t seem to know how to end Righteous Kill, so he gives us a massive cliche, the good guy and the bad guy in an old abandoned warehouse pointing guns at each other in what I suppose is meant to be a tense standoff, except that there is never for a second the slightest doubt about how it will turn out.

Despite coming at the very end of the summer, this is one of the more anticipated late-summer releases, especially among action fans eager to see the two film legends finally on screen together again. Unfortunately, there is more effort put into overcoming all of what must be the massive complications involved in getting two guys like DeNiro and Pacino into a movie together than there is into making it a good movie beyond their presence. They inhabit their roles, as is to be expected, but the rest of the movie feels like it is hanging off of them like a wet paper bag. It’s more fun than a swift kick in the ass, but to say that we should expect better than this from them would be something of an understatement.

Most people I know hate missing the previews but also tend to be not so great at getting out of the house on time. Luckily I spend a lot of time at the movies, so if you have bad luck with the red lights on the way to the theater, here are some of the previews you’re missing…

BABYLON A.D. (2008), Action/Adventure/Sci-fi/Thriller, PG-13, 90 mins.

Well, judging by the preview, the movie looks cool as hell, even though Vin Diesel plays a guy named Toorop. He’s a veteran-turned-mercenary whose peaceful and quiet life is disrupted when he accepts a job escorting a Russian woman to America. What he doesn’t know is that her body hosts a mysterious organism that allows you to turn into a shapeshifter or manipulate your DNA somehow. Something like that. Anyway a lot of shady characters are after her with shady plans for her powers. The details are pretty fuzzy thus far, but what we do know is that throughout most of Europe a 160 minute version will be released into theaters, so we’re going to see about half of the movie here in the states. That hardly seems fair.

I’ve heard that this is a sign that we are sure to lose a lot of Director Mathieu Kassovitz’s trademark violence, but I think the loss of his faith is a far larger concern.

In a highly unusual move for the director of a major movie, Kassovitz has been loudly badmouthing the film, which will not be screened for critics prior to its release, for some time now.

“It’s pure violence and stupidity…All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters… instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24.”

Not a good sign, especially since Kassovitz had been working on the thing for five years. But then again, this could be a learning experience for us in the audience. Last week, The House Bunny was released, with possibly the most inappropriate PG-13/content combination ever. Kassovitz claimed that he suffered massive interference from the studio, who were willing to make any sacrifice for that PG-13 rating, so it should be interesting to see what kind of film that gives us.

Sounds to me like a case of a director who saw a great script and signed on to the movie only to watch it butchered to death in front of his eyes by money-hungry producers.

“I like the energy of it and I got some scenes I’m happy with. But I know what I had - I had something much better in my hands but I just wasn’t allowed to work.”

Babylon A.D. will be released August 29th.

BANGKOK DANGEROUS (2008), Action/Crime/Thriller, R, 100 mins.

So the IMDb lists a synopsis of the plot of Bangkok Dangerous which does not inspire confidence. “A hitman who’s in Bangkok to pull off a series of jobs falls for a local woman and bonds with his errand boy.”

What?

The story is about a ruthless American assassin who is in Thailand to assassinate four enemies of a brutal crime boss. Being a tourist in Thailand, he hires a local boy to run errands and cover his tracks for him. His intention is to get rid of him after he finishes his assignments, but he ends up forming a mentoring relationship with him, teaching the boy his murderous craft at the same time as he begins to develop a romantic relationship with a local deaf-mute girl.

These budding relationships cause him to question his extreme loner lifestyle, and he begins to let down his guard at all the wrong times.

I don’t know yet whether this will be any good, but either way I recommend a similar Nicholas Cage movie, Matchstick Men.

Bangkok Dangerous will be released September 5th.

RIGHTEOUS KILL (2008), Crime/Drama, R, 100 mins.

I am of the opinion that you can’t make a bad movie with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in it, especially when DeNiro is saying things like “There’s nothing wrong with a little shooting, as long as the right people get shot.”

DeNiro and Pacino play two veteran New York City police officers who sense a connection between a recent murder and a case that they believed they had solved years before. Now their questions is whether there is a copycat serial killer on the loose or they put the wrong man in prison in the old case.

The movie raises interesting moral and political questions when it turns out that the killer is targeting violent criminals who managed to squeeze through the legal cracks in the judicial system, basically doing the job that the criminal justice system couldn’t do because the cops’ hands were tied with red tape, or some technicality put a criminal back on the streets.

Righteous Kill will be released September 12th.

MY BEST FRIEND’S GIRL (2008), Comedy, R, 101 mins.

Not to be outdone by Babylon A.D. director Matthieu Kassovitz, My Best Friend’s Girl director Dane Cook has been badmouthing his own movie prior to its release. But not so much the movie, just the poster. The movie, he says, “is the best/funniest film I’ve done to date. It’s got a terrific cast. Kate Hudson, Alec Baldwin, Jason Biggs, and myself really kicked the funny around. This movie showcases our talents as it expands on them. It’s a fun R-rated flick. An edgy comedy with a dash of romance”

Sounds good, but wow, you should hear him rail on this poster. I invite you to take a quick look at his MySpace page, where he has posted a vast list of the Photoshop crimes committed behind his back on this poster, including the fact that the angle of his neck makes him look like he was raised in an abandoned barn by a family of owls, and that his left side “looks like Brittany Spears’ vagina.”

Personally I think he’s being a little too hard on the poster which, in my opinion, does nothing worse than make the movie look no different from every other by-the-numbers romantic comedy to come along in the last six or eight years.

I’m hoping that Cook is right about the comedy in the movie being good, because the story has nothing going for it. He plays Tank, a cocky anti-hero whose best friend (Jason Biggs) hires him to take his ex-girlfriend on a terrible date so that she’ll realize she made a mistake breaking up with him.
I’m curious about what kind of disasters they might come up with to make Jason Biggs look good to someone like Kate Hudson. This has to be the most unlikely and incongruous pair of the year, to say the least!

My Best Friend’s Girl will be released September 19th.

BLINDNESS (2008), Drama/Mystery/Romance/Thriller, R, 118 mins.

A mysterious epidemic of “white blindness” ravages a city, and the affected are quarantined in an abandoned mental hospital, forming an unstable society of the newly blind, in which the physically powerful prey upon the weak, rationing food and committing violent and atrocious acts.

The only eyewitness to the outbreak is a woman whose sight is somehow unaffected, and who follows her husband into quarantine. She keeps her sight a secret and uses her advantage to help guide her husband and a small group of strangers to safety. Their dangerous journey takes them through the ravages streets of the city, where all manner of civilization has broken down completely.

Blindness stars Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Sandra Oh and will be released September 26th.

NICK & NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST (2008), Drama/Comedy, PG-13, I’m guessing 100 mins or so.

Michael Cera stars as a young musician without the female magnetism that should come along with such a thing. Devastated that his girlfriend has recently left him, she shows up soon after the breakup at one of his gigs with a new guy.

Desperate to show that he has moved on as well, he accepts an offer from a strange girl in a bar to be her boyfriend for five minutes, beginning an epic night of song writing, exotic foods, stripping nuns, singing in the rain, and psychotic ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends.

I guess I’ll just come out and say that by now it’s getting a little old that Michael Cera is still playing exactly the same character he played in the brilliant TV sitcom “Arrested Development.” I’m hoping he branches out soon, because he’s clearly a talented actor. Still, the movie looks pretty good so far…

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist will be released October 3rd.

QUARANTINE (2008), Horror/Mystery/Thriller.

Jennifer Carpenter, of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, plays a television reporter assigned to spend the night with a Los Angeles Fire crew. A routine 911 call brings them to an apartment building where police are already on the scene in response to mysterious screams coming from inside.

It turns out that the screams are coming from a woman who has been infected with an unknown but extremely infectious virus, and Carpenter and her news crew find themselves quarantined inside the building with the few remaining residents. All phones, cell phone service, and internet are cut off, and the people inside the building are not given any news as far as what is going on. After the event is over, the only evidence that anything unusual took place is their news footage shot inside the building.

Quarantine will be released October 10th.

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MAX PAYNE (2008), Action/Crime/Drama/Thriller, probably R and 110 mins or so.

Mark Wahlberg plays the perectly named Max Payne, a New York City DEA agent investigating a series of murders in the city. Payne has a personal vendetta to satisfy, it seems that his family was killed as part of a conspiracy, and in his investigation he is teamed up with an assassin named Mona Sax, who is out to avenge her sister’s death.

Complicating matters is that the pair are taking the law into their own hands, and find themselves hunted not only the police, but also the mob and a ruthless corporation.

Mark Wahlberg is great at roles like this (see his hardened character in The Departed), but he seems to have made the mistake of claiming that he could kick Batman’s ass.

“Take off the suit and if you want to go one-on-one, two-on-one, and put a couple of you guys together - they all like to put the comic book characters together - come at me.”

Isn’t that kind of like saying you’re bigger than Jesus? At any rate, the movie looks cool, and will be released October 17th.