15 minutes of fame
Watching either Robert De Niro or AL Pacino is a treat in itself, and more so if both come together in a film. Think Godfather II (though they are never together in the same frame), Heat and you will know what I mean.
The recent film, Righteous Kill, might not be great film, and it definitely isn’t – but for Pacino and De Niro. Both together on the screen rock big time. Pacino underplays himself – he lets De Niro hog the limelight in the first part of the film – and that’s the absolute beauty of being Pacino. In fact, in the interval, I was thinking to myself that this was more a De Niro film, and that Pacino just happened to be there. True, though, that Pacino gets to mouth all the best lines!
De Niro is effective like always. There are certain actors who you know for sure will deliver the goods – no matter what the film. And, De Niro is definitely one of them. But why did he have to be painted as a sex-hungry police officer? Maybe, it was a sort of red herring – a mean and tough cop, who is known to lose his temper, who would rather resort to underhand ways to punish the guilty rather than letting them go scot free, and the sex-maniac kind of an image probably adds to all this.
Pacino, on the other hand, is this wity guy. A perfect foil to the hot-tempered De Niro. The perfect partner, one can say. He comes up with the right lines, wisecracks his way to your heart – till you can actually see clearly who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy.
Pacino is too good to be believable, and De Niro is too bad to be believable. Pacino plays the devil’s advocate – and De Niro almost dances to his tune. Probabaly the best part about the film was that till the interval, you actually think Pacino has been majorly wasted. This guy actually lets you think that! And, just when you are sure about it, he springs it on you.
De Niro is effective in the entire film – but Pacino steals the show in the last 15 minutes. And, that’s the image that stays with you. Amazing – 1 hour 15 minutes undone in 15 minutes flat!
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Medha, have not seen this movie, but from what i hear, it has been trashed all over. Though being a big time fan of both De Niro and Pacino, i would see it just for their sake. Its another matter, that its been sometime since i saw a great performance from either of them. While at least for Pacino, there has been Insomnia in recent times, its been a long time since i have seen De Niro in a great role.
Heat is one of my favorite movies, and of course the restaurant scene, where both of them meet is a classic. Loved the way Michael Mann, sets it up, De Niro cool and laidback, totally dry, Pacino all hyper, insecure.
Ratnakar,
Very true. This as I said is not a great film – but both of them together are pretty good. And Pacino in the last few scenes rocks.
personally i thought it was a run of the mill bait and switch story. . Quite predictable. . Would have loved to c them do something different for a change . . Imagine brokeback street
The movie was pretty decent and as quoted by Abhay was run of the mill stuff given that the movie starred two brilliant actors like Deniro and Pacino….it could have had much explosive content which would have elevated their performances to a different level altogether…..
There is n doubt that both the actors rocked in the movie….but the content of the movie could have done wonders and taken this movie to another level altogether…