Righteous Kill

Getting Al Pacino and Robert De Niro on screen together for the first time since 1995's Heat must have seemed like a brilliant idea. But simply putting these two greats in the same room is not enough. There is a frustrating lack of direction and backbone to Righteous Kill and the result is that the two actors seem merely to flounder and revert to type - shouting a lot and looking angry. Two well-worn New York City cops, Rooster (Pacino) and Turk (De Niro) - who certainly earn those nicknames with their puffed-up, bird-like swaggering - are investigating recent activity by a suspected serial killer whom they thought they had jailed years before. Are they connected? Did they lock up the wrong guy? Do we care? It's certainly hard to give two hoots by the time the denouement comes round, since the film is something of a long trek (once the gleam of seeing two movie magnificoes up there together has worn off). The best way to pass the time is perhaps to wonder what you could have done with that budget (a whopping $60 million) and those actors. ·