Is it possible to make a bad movie with an amazing screenwriter, legendary actors and $60 million? That was the question haunting my mind as I walked out of the movie theatre last Sunday, after watching the latest Jon Avnet movie: Righteous Kill.

At the top of the bill, three names: Robert de Niro, Al Pacino and Russell Gerwirtz (writer of Inside Man). That was enough to make me check the IMDB’s rating. All of them were pretty bad. Still, I thought Inside Man was genius, so far I’ve loved every cinematographic confrontations of Robert de Niro and Al Pacino, and I couldn’t resist a good, smart and fast American blockbuster on a coldish Sunday late afternoon.

Comfortably seated in the theatre, with popcorn in my left hand, I was ready for the big entertainment. The room went dark and the first images popped up on the screen…but 15 seconds later I was already bored. De Niro and Al Pacino were shooting frenetically at paper targets, with matrixico-electro-metal music and cop jokes that acted as a backdrop. I sobbed.

The rest wasn’t any better: two bachelor cops at the New York Police Department acting like sexy heroes and flirting with immorality. Except they were 65, looking 80. Not so sexy…

But above all, I was expecting more from the man who created the brilliant narrative twists of Inside Man. The plot demonstrates a serious lack of originality (a cop becoming a serial killer…has anyone seen Dexter?), the cues are dull, the dénouement awfully predictable. At the end of the movie, a sentence is highlighted as the moral of the story: “Most people respect the badge. Everybody respects the gun.” I guess it speaks for itself.

So yes, I have discovered that it is actually possible to make a bad movie with a great screenwriter, amazing actors and a relatively big budget: Righteous Kill is a pretty good illustration of how the best ingredients do not always end up giving the best results.

Image courtesy of www.righteouskill-themovie.com