You work in this business long enough you start realizing what release dates translate to. A May through August release date means you're shooting for cash. An October through Christmas Day release means you're hunting Oscar. February? You've given up. September with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in a crime movie? Yikes. You must have a bomb on your hands there fella.

Only they don't, exactly. This is actually a very watchable film. You won't find many lines to snicker at, and you might start the healing process with Pacino and what he did to you with 88 Minutes. Don't mistake my slight praise, I'm not saying this is a good movie. I'm just saying it should have been way worse given the context of the situation.

Plotwise Righteous Kill is pretty typical. De Niro and Pacino are homicide detectives, long-time partners in the NYPD. They've worked the murder beat for 20+ years; been there and done that. The film has purposefully misleading details so I won't break it down much further other than to say the detectives come upon a serial murder case that has everyone scrambling for answers. John Leguizamo and Donnie "Step by Step" Wahlberg join the cast as fellow detectives while Carla Gugino is the femme fatale forensics specialist.

Now then, to throw my critical hat back on I'll mention that at times the dynamic duo comes off as a bit too long in the tooth to be running around New York. Some of the scenes don't help them out either. I get why you'd show Bobby and Al at the shooting range but why not go the weight room route? At 65 and 68 years of age, respectively, I'm not sure why director Jon Avnet needed to convince us these guys were shredded. The film didn't need it. The other off-putting part is Carla Gugino, or rather the role she's asked to play. It's a thankless and typical one-note part that should have been left on the cutting room floor.

One could do worse for a Sunday matinee though. The film could have been painful to watch, but it wasn't. It's not worthy of a classic like Heat or indicative of the amazing body of work these two have compiled -- but it's not completely shoddy either.

Grade: C+

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