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...going on four decades, they've been the odd couple of Method movie stars: implosive vs. explosive, compressed energy and showboating showmanship. Robert De Niro caught our eye and kept it by being watchful, a figure of static electricity, a hoarder of his characters' motives. He did more by seeming to do nothing. Al Pacino was the total opposite: he laid it all on the table. Then he sliced it up, gobbled it down and spat it out. Before leaving the room, he'd scream at the table, smash it to pieces and use one of the splinters to pick...
...Since the early '70s the two have dominated dramatic acting in films; when Brando abdicated, they seized the crown. Just the pictures De Niro made with Martin Scorsese would constitute a dream career for any almost other performer: Mean Streets in 1973, then Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas. Same with Pacino's "S" movies: Serpico and Scarecrow in '73, followed by Scarface, Sea of Love, Scent of a Woman. De Niro and Pacino played father and son in The Godfather Part II but never shared a scene. In the 1995 Heat they spent nearly three hours in the same movie...
...were a serial killer? A peace officer certainly has motive, means and opportunity to knock off a dozen or so malefactors who probably deserve to die but have escaped conviction. The cop could truly believe that killing them is nothing less than righteous. He might think of himself as De Niro's Travis Bickle did in Taxi Driver, using his gun to wash the New York streets clean of their wretched refuse. And at the beginning of this film we are shown a grainy video of Turk (De Niro), who says he's been a cop for more than...
...De Niro is 65, Pacino 68. (Brian Dennehy, who plays their precinct captain, is 70.) Isn't there a mandatory retirement age for cops? And, in New York, don't a lot of them take full-pay retirement after 20 years? Rooster describes retirement as "death with benefits." His work is his life, and he won't give either of them up. But a movie demands a little verisimilitude. Impolitic as it might be to make this observation, it's also unavoidable when talking about a movie like Righteous Kill: the camera is a remorseless appraiser of advancing...
...De Niro has weathered pretty well. In a bed scene with Gugino, his skin still clings tautly to his body. The scowl that was the actor's early trademark has settled into a thin lip-line of resignation; no catastrophe laid on Turk can surprise or disappoint him. Maybe De Niro has kept his physical instrument in shape all these years by husbanding his gestures. But Pacino has been a perpetual motion machine. In this movie he still is: dancing like a boxer, chewing gum, his feet banging out a nervous paradiddle. Eventually, gravity takes its revenge. In remorseless closeup...