Dark Knights

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are art heroes. In great, good and poor films, they stay moral, political, creative. Moviegoers are still drawn to them—and so to their trashy new movie Righteous Kill—because we trust these actors to dramatize ethical dilemma, familiar nerve and recognizable moral struggle such as both embodied in the Godfather films. The Godfather trilogy is a movie landmark tantamount to cultural mythology. (Too bad Film Forum’s soon-to-come Godfather revival leaves out Part III, which is crucial to completing the Corleone Family’s agon. It’s like amputating a segment of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia.)

In those movies, both Pacino and De Niro played memorable figures of corrupted virtue and deep sorrow. The young Don Corelone and self-destructive Michael embodied universal desires yet fell short in deeply identifiable ways. Some of that tragedy animates the heart of Righteous Kill. It’s a cop drama where De Niro and Pacino—as Turk and Rooster—play homicide detectives hunting a serial killer who “cleans up” the messes they’ve investigated by executing likely suspects.

Righteous Kill questions vigilantism but it also gives De Niro and Pacino the chance to explore the thinking and feeling of men who see sin everyday yet struggle with the proper response (They’re modern versions of Travis Bickle’s “God’s lonely man”). The opening sequence of Turk and Rooster displaying their perfect gun skills illustrates the human capacity for exacting absolute justice. The film fails because questioning the use of force (the Munich question) clashes with director Jon Avnet’s excitement at showing violence and the dirty thrill of wondering whether good cops have gone bad.

There’s such rich suggestiveness in Righteous Kill (it’s structured around De Niro giving an outrageous videotape confession that would make him the Hannibal Lecter of movie cops) that one waits patiently for the moral issues to be properly resolved. They aren’t. Plot development doesn’t suffice moral satisfaction. Turk and Rooster give us a wild goose chase. Avnet simply doesn’t know how to create credible urban flavor (which ultra-hack Ridley Scott cheapened in American Gangster). Our thoughts about law, order and human weakness aren’t enthralling as in The Godfather films. It’s merely a relief that Avnet skirts the fancy, rotten escapism of Michael Mann’s Heat.

In place of credibly exploring social and personal decadence, Righteous Kill offers two faces: De Niro and Pacino, now broad-jawed, wrinkled, weary-eyed and thickened. Both look like average middle-aged men. The life of the city is imprinted on their faces and in the pragmatic, not cynical, attitudes that Turk and Rooster bring to their jobs. De Niro and Pacino maintain the gift of soulful expression. De Niro’s minimal and true while Pacino taps emotional extravagance like a Frankie Valli operatic high note. These are rare qualities. Harry Belafonte has one of those faces, so did Ossie Davis, Ivan Dixon, Bernie Mac and sometimes Nick Nolte—few others. To see heroic faces reflect human dilemma is worth tolerating even a minor movie. 

Righteous Kill should have been titled “Dark Knights of the Soul.” It corrects the dismal, life-denying cynicism in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight by showing how Turk and Rooster move in the recognizable world, struggling to stay human and loyal—not fantastical. Not just a team, they share guilt and understanding. This adult camaraderie rouses feelings that Nolan missed—as did Scorsese’s Americanized (ruined) The Departed. Even Jet Li and Jason Statham’s rivalry in War had more complexity and depth—the closest a recent movie has come to the partnership dilemmas that were Sam Peckinpah’s specialty. Righteous Kill is an exhibition of missed opportunities, yet this summit meeting of De Niro and Pacino poses an opportunity no genuine movie lover would miss.