Righteous Kill
Tom ‘Turk’ Cowan and David ‘Rooster’ Fisk are two cops that have been with the corps for ages already when they get a strange case in their hands: a criminal who was set free got murdered and no evidence was found except for a note with a poem written on it. When little later they hear about a similar case from their colleagues, they start digging deeper and find out that someone has been killing several criminals, all whom have managed to escape justice.
A task force headed by Tom and David is set up but then it becomes clear that the serial killer must be someone from within the police force and all clues start to point towards Tom…
Sound and Vision:
The image quality is as you would expect from a Blu-ray release of a recent movie. The level of detail is good, so is the contrast and compression errors are completely absent. Just as it should be, we get to see every pimple on De Niro’s face and every wrinkle on Pacino’s.
Where we’re pretty happy with the image, we certainly aren’t with the sound. We get both a Dolby Digital 5.1 as well as a DTS-HD 5.1 track and both are of unacceptable quality. They are both over steered which results in noise and cracks being loudly present all the time. Seeing that none of the previews we’ve seen of this film have this issue, it’s clear this is purely an issue due to the transfer onto Blu-ray (maybe also DVD but we couldn’t compare by lack of the DVD). It might be that our copy had a manufacturing error but seeing it came in a retail box it seems likely that similar versions were shipped to stores. So be sure to check out the sound before buying!
Extras:
– Audio commentary tracks
– Behind the scenes
– The Thin Blue Line: The Darker Side of the Police Force
– The Investigation: An In-depth look at Righteous Kill
– Interviews cast & crew
Quite a number of extras, some being quite interesting to check out.
Conclusion:
Righteous Kill puts two of Hollywood’s biggest icons in the same movie again. Yes, De Niro and Pacino were to be seen before on screen together in Heat, but that was only a rather short scene. Here we get both heavyweights together for almost the entire movie and the ping pong between both just splatters off the screen. Great stuff!
Unfortunately this doesn’t last for the entire movie and towards the end things go downhill as the director doesn’t seem to want to finish the movie and lets things drag on for no good reason and this clearly hurts the overall experience. Still, Righteous Kill is definitely one to check out but be sure to check the sound before buying as the version we got was plain awful!
6.0