theshadow908

Righteous Kill tells the story of two veteran New York City homicide detectives who have been partners for 30 years. When one of them oversteps the bounds of the law, the other covers it up. Now they are on the trail of a serial killer who is killing known criminals, and when they figure out that the killer knows things that only a cop would know, tensions begin to rise as the two detectives deal with the fact that the killer may be much closer to them than they think.

Obviously one of the greatest acting partnerships ever put on screen would have to be the combination of Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. This is the third time the pair have been in a movie together. Unfortunately in The Godfather Part II they were in two separate stories and never shared screen time. In Michael Mann's crime masterpiece Heat, they finally appeared together, but many including myself feel that the coffee shop meeting was very anti-climatic. Now here they are together, finally on screen together through the majority of the film. Their on screen chemistry is great, and their performances are good. As a matter of fact, all the performances in this movie are good save for the mediocre acting of Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. The best part of this movie are watching these two acting legends work together. There's a good line of dialogue here and there, and the twist at the end of the film, though predictable, is well executed.

The bad news is that this film as a whole is incredibly weak. It offers nothing new, nothing noteworthy to give it praise for. I think DeNiro and Pacino could have picked something much better to appear in. As a cop movie, I had seen it all before. The movie isn't exciting in the slightest. It has a very basic plot, like a direct to video film or an episode of a crime TV show. I didn't believe the relationship between DeNiro and Carla Guigino's characters. DeNiro is in his mid-sixties, he shouldn't be having relationships with women in their thirties. I was able to partially enjoy the film due to the acting and the few good lines that were sprinkled throughout, but the script was written very badly for the most part, and the movie left my mind half an hour after leaving the theatre. This had the potential to be so much more.

5/10

W. tells the story of how George W. Bush started off as a wild party animal in college who couldn't hold down a job and was considered the black sheep of his family and eventually went on to become the leader of the most powerful country in the world. The movie cuts back and forth between scenes of President Bush and his administration planning the Iraq war to scenes of young Bush trying to impress his father but failing all the time.

When I first heard that this film was being made, I had an idea what it would be like. I figured since Oliver Stone was directing it, it would be a scathing character attack on George W. Bush that would make him out to be the most idiotic man ever to walk the planet. I figured it would portray ridiculous conspiracy theories as fact, such as claiming Bush planned 9/11. However, what I got when I watched the film was a surprisingly fair look at George W. Bush's life. In fact, Stone even managed to make him look a little less of an idiot than some people think he is. The film shows that Bush's only problem is that he can't really throw a sentence together properly. It also shows that in planning the Iraq war, he was simply acting on the advice of his administration who told him that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that controlling the oil in Iraq would be beneficial for the USA. There's a scene I loved where Bush actually gets angry that they're not finding any weapons and demands to know who's in charge of the operation, but nobody seems to know anything. I really enjoyed how the film didn't run in order, it jumped back and forth between showing Bush as the president to showing Bush as a reckless college student and starting out as a struggling politician. I found the film very interesting to watch. Every performance in the film was top notch. Josh Brolin did a very good job with Bush by actually acting the role and not just impersonating. Every other performance was just as fun to watch though.

The only problem I had with this film is that it seemed very low key compared to other Stone films such as JFK or Nixon. That could be because he kept it fair and kept the conspiracy theories and personal opinion out of it. I just don't find myself wanting to watch this film again, and I don't think it's going to be a movie that's remembered through the years. It's a movie that's kind of just there, I watched it, I enjoyed it, now I'll move on. It was interesting and definitely worth one viewing, but it has no staying power with me.

7/10