Let's be realistic.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Pacino and DeNiro, an unbeatable combination but then add a load of A list actors and you have a recipe for a seriously good movie. A clever story with an unexpected twist, generally well acted and well worth watching. Retained for future viewing.

I admit I was excited when the cast of this movie was announced and even more so when I heard Robert De Niro and Al Pacino would be on screen together most of the movie. But when it came to the movie I was very disappointed as the plot was weak and bizarre and having both main actors playing heroes who were close friends didn't work. Why Michael Mann's Heat worked was the plot wasn't overly complicated and De Niro and Pacino played mortal enemies on opposite sides of the law. To describe this movie would be to call it the antitheses of Heat, a slow paced lame duck which promised much but failed to deliver, what a let down.

Here's a film that really surprised me, something that was more engagingly entertaining as it went along, though a slight bit messy. I love movies like that. How many films have there been, where serial killers are cops? Not many, where I found the whole experience refreshingly original, and admirable. Pacino and Deniro reunite as veteran cops, working a case involving the murders of scumbags who've evaded jail, where justice has failed one too many times. This thriller throws in an old trick, among other cliché'd ones, making you really believe early in the piece, Deniro's really the guy, in a lot of consistent flashback interviews where he's venting and describing the atrocities and unsavory acts of these dead executed scumbags. With thriller tricks like this, you know it must be someone else, or later, you rethink, may'be it is Deniro. May'be it is. Being hip to this, like a few other smart minds, I was right earlier with my answer. But as the movie progresses, a few other suspects, surfaced, even one unlawful party, which had me pointing fingers at these few, even our duo's aging, tired Captain (Dennehy), momentarily. We have a warring cop duo working with finest in the forms of Wahlberg senior and Leguizamo, who has a hard on for Deniro's character Turk. I must say RK opened up, like a few cheesy and really bad b grade pics started, and I was worried, but man, this film gets you in. I really found Pacino, lost with his character, trying to find it, as he didn't really seem in the mind set, as though he was clinging to a former role, and saying, "Well being such a great actor, I have to away with it. Playing it down, like he did in 88 Minutes, he really wasn't offering much to the role here as Rooster, Turk's best friend and partner, which you will see as far as his characterization goes, really puts the thriller element, at risk. I really found this film though, such an entertaining one, although it's not gonna remembered in these acting legends filmographies. But it was a chance, again to see these two acting greats, play off each other, which kind of hoping it would be in a better film than this. Oz's Trilby Glover, is just another prime example of HOTNESS.

I barely know why I do things, let alone why great actors and other movie stars agree to do movies that diminish them in the eyes of their audiences. Therefore, I will not attempt to speculate why DeNiro and Pacino agreed to work together on Righteous Kill, a movie so bad that the only two things to recommend it are the always luscious Carla Gugino and the high-contrast "Reservoir Dogs"-style movie poster.Snip this R-rated yawner down to a TV-14 (the way I saw it) and the viewer gets to sit through 88 minutes of incomprehensible incoherence. DeNiro's face is fascinating to look at (because there's something clearly dangerous right under the surface. Pacino's hair has a mind of its own. Gugino has an old-fashioned sex-symbol vibe. Brian Dehenney, Donnie Wahlberg, and John Leigezumo are all fun to watch, but they have thankless jobs. And that, folks, is that. All they is and they ain't no mo'.