Some Righteous Shit

It's been over a month. Let's go to the La Grange!

What were my choices?

Mamma Mia! - No, not for mia.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 - I still haven't seen Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 1.

Ghost Town - I saw this already.

Righteous Kill - Hell yeah!



Ah, the title of this movie. For some reason it brings to mind some made-up phrase a surfer or skateboarder would use in a retarded screenwriter's mind. This would be the perfect title for a sequel to Gleaming The Cube. Actually, the perfect title for a sequel to Gleaming The Cube would be Christian Slater Sits On A Sharp Pole For 90 Minutes.

But I digress.

This isn't a skateboarding movie, though a skateboarding pimp does make a brief appearance before he is shot to death. No, he does not have the time to say to his murderer, "Dude, that was so not a righteous kill!"

I'm going to give one or two spoilers in this review, so if you don't like shitty movies spoiled, stop reading now (and I feel sorry for you).

This movie has everything. DeNiro! Pacino! Gugino!

Gugino? Yes, this movie has Carla Gugino. If you'll allow me to briefly objectify women, she is one of two women on my "list". In other words, hubba hubba to the nth degree. This movie may have resulted in her being taken off the list.

Let me explain. We are introduced to her character as she comes home at night. As she is taking off her coat, etc., a hand reaches around her mouth and grabs her. Later we learn, oh, that was just her boyfriend, Social Security recipient Robert DeNiro. Oh, and it turns out she likes getting grabbed in her apartment.

And she likes being treated roughly during sex. And she gets turned on when DeNiro beats up people. She essentially functions as an object of hostile male sexual aggression throughout the movie. And she is screwing an old guy. Ewwwwww. So, my objectification of Ms. Gugino has been ruined by this stupid movie. And her role actually gets even worse (see below).

Regarding DeNiro and Pacino, holy crap did I not give a shit that these two "legends" shared screen time in this movie. I remember when people oohed and aahed at the restaurant scene between them in Michael Mann's Heat. I thought, "Who gives a shit?"

Well, this movie was an hour and a half of "who gives a shit". DeNiro was puffy, and Pacino was decrepit. Absolutely decrepit. These guys are supposedly seasoned detectives of the NYPD. The seasonings have not done a good job of masking their putrefaction. They are old. The film opens with a montage of them at the shooting range, gleefully destroying targets, interspersed with scenes with DeNiro coaching girls' baseball and Pacino playing chess. Who gives a shit?

The source of the supposed drama of this turkey is that you are given the impression that DeNiro has been killing criminals extrajudicially for a period of time, when the stupid good-for-nothing ineffectual justice system does not do its job of properly convicting them. We see criminal after criminal implausibly killed by an unseen unassailant. Each victim is left with a small handwritten poem.

As the movie progressed, it got so boring that I thought to myself, "Well, they probably are going to reveal that it's not DeNiro doing the killings, because this movie is so fucking boring." Sure enough, it's not DeNiro. Is it Gugino? No, it's not Gugino. Is it Pacino? Yes, it is Pacino.

Eventually somebody gets the crazy idea that it might be a cop doing the killings. Do they look at handwriting samples of the various police officers, to search for a match with the handwritten notes? No, why would they do that?

So, Pacino is like an avenging angel or some such shit, killing the bad people. As we near the end of the movie, the filmmakers apparently felt the need to up the "suspense" and "drama". For no discernible reason, Pacino visits Gugino and beats up and (I think) rapes her. He rapes her? Why the hell would he do that? Maybe they should have called this movie Righteous Kill and Inexplicable Rape. That sounds like a superhero team or something.

How does Pacino's action remotely line up with his motive for killing criminals? It makes no sense. And it only further emphasizes the state of Ms. Gugino as the (beat up and raped, even!) objectification of a non-human woman. Terrible.

Oh, speaking of objectification of women, Pam Grier is the other one on my list.

Coffy is the color of her skin!
Coffy is the world she lives in!




UPDATE:

Holy crap, I just realized this movie was directed by Jon Avnet, who also directed the equally awful Al Pacino vehicle 88 Minutes! Awesome (in a bad way)!