Say what you will about Batman, but he is a rare example of a self-sustaining vigilante.One that lives in a symbiosis with the city he's protecting. It's an abusive symbiosis for both sides and Batman happens to be a sociopathic billionaire, but neither Bruce Wayne or Gotham City could exist without one another.Point is, he's an anomaly in vigilante fiction. The entertainment industry has embraced the concept over the recent years, yet it doesn't seem to know what to make of it. So as a viewer, I'm not sure what to think of vigilantes in fiction either. You know what ? RIGHTEOUS KILL doesn't know what to think about the subject either.
Turk (Robert de Niro) and Rooster (Al Pacino) are cops, partners, best friends and also ridiculously old. The movie opens with Turk confessing 14 murders to a security camera, to an audience of serious-looking cops. RIGHETOUS KILL is the story of these murders, triggered by a cop's anger at law enforcement and the judiciary system after child killer Charlie Randall (Frank John Hughes) was declared not guilty at his trial. But as the cops are closing down on Turk, he starts behaving very much like an innocent man and his narration of the murders is starting to get awfully abstract. Is he really the vigilante? Is he insane? What the fuck is happening?
I don't understand this romantic fascination for vigilantes from mainsteam entertainment, yet its absolute refusal to make them anything but a depressed, tragic figure that cannot live with its own murders. It's bizarre that in a society where the state still practices executions, that lawful and moral murders are still perceived as an act of desperation. The way RIGHTEOUS KILL blurred the line between vigilantism and serial killing bugged me. I don't see the moral grey line in that context. The other cops had no reason whatsoever to crack down so hard on a serial killer of scumbags. I'm sure that in our world, many assholes have died already and the police let the files rot at the bottom of their pile, because they figured the jerks had it coming. I'm not saying it's OK to take the laws in your own hands and kill scumbags, but the desperate vigilante portrait has become jarring. Why couldn't he just quietly enjoy his job like, I don't know, Dexter Morgan's shy little brother?
Sworn enemies or jogging partners?
The problems that plague RIGHTEOUS KILL are way too simple to go in great details. Long story short, it's poorly written and poorly executed in general. There are good ideas to it, but they are criminally underdevelopped. There are two interesting characters, Turk and Rooster. RIGHTEOUS KILL could have been a stage play starring only these two and it would have made more sense. The rest of the cast is painfully one-dimensional. John Leguizamo as the tough, yet moral cop is laughable. Too bad, because there are interesting B listers in the movie. I hadn't seen Brian Dennehy and the other Wahlberg (the New Kid on the Block) for ages. Too bad their above average game cannot save them from the paper characters they were handed.
For some reason, I have been wanting to watch RIGHTEOUS KILL for a couple of years now. I wanted to like it. I thought the title was bitchin', the cover is cool and gritty and the cast is intriguing to say the least. I was always put off by people around me saying : ''Nooooooooooooo, it really sucks.'' These people were right. Mostly right, anyway. It's not a very successful film. Not much can save a movie from poor writing and easy decisions. RIGHTEOUS KILL has already found its way to Netflix, the DVD bargain bins and in cinema oblivion, where it unfortunately belongs.