Tagline: Most people respect the badge. Everybody respects the gun.
Veteran New York City police detectives on the trail of a vigilante serial killer in the adrenaline fueled psychological thriller Righteous Kill, directed by Jon Avnet (Red Corner, Fried Green Tomatoes) and written by Russell Gewirtz (Inside Man). The cast also features hip-hop superstar Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson (Get Rich or Die Tryin’).
After 30 years as partners in the pressure cooker environment of the NYPD, highly decorated Detectives David Fisk and Thomas Cowan should be ready for retirement, but aren’t. Before they can hang up their badges, they are called in to investigate the murder of a notorious pimp, which appears to have ties to a case they solved years before.
Like the original murder, the victim is a suspected criminal whose body is found accompanied by a four line poem justifying the killing. When additional crimes take place, it becomes clear the detectives are looking for a serial killer, one who targets criminals that have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system. His mission is to do what the cops can’t do on their own — take the culprits off the streets for good. The similarities between the recent killings and their earlier case raise a nagging question: Did they put the wrong man behind bars?
About the Production
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino hold a unique place in the public imagination. Known for their intensity and unforgettable performances in some of the grittiest, most respected urban dramas of the past 30 years, until now the Oscar-winning actors have shared only a few minutes of screen time. Righteous Kill marks the first time audiences will see them together in almost every scene of a movie.
“When you’re told that you can you come and work on a movie with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, it’s very hard to say no,” says producer Rob Cowan. “These two guys are iconic. I think that for everybody it was kind of a magical thing and it drew a lot of people to the project. It was certainly terrific watching them on set.”
Daniel Rosenberg, another of the film’s producers, says he would have been excited to work with just one of the film’s great lead actors. “From a producer’s standpoint, having them together in a movie is the true definition of synergy. The whole is even greater than the sum of the two parts.”
Randall Emmett, co-chair of Emmett/Furla Films and one of the film’s producers, had been looking for a property for Robert De Niro for some time. “When Avi Lerner and I came across this script, we felt it was perfect for him. He responded to it, and then the next step was kind of backwards, because we didn’t have a director. The first name that came to us was Jon Avnet, a director we’d worked with before and respected.”
Lerner, co-chairman of Millennium / Nu Image Films and the producer of over 200 films including The Black Dahlia and Rambo, says he was impressed by the way Avnet works. “I like his efficiency. I like the fact that he’s a director and a producer from the independent world and understands the way we work. And he’s a very, very sensitive person. He knows how to show the relationship between characters.”
For his part, veteran director and producer Jon Avnet was elated to have a chance to work with De Niro, who has won two Oscars and been nominated for four others. Avnet went to New York to meet De Niro and talk with him about the script. When the conversation turned to casting, De Niro suggested Al Pacino for the role of his partner.
“You know, Al and I weren’t actually in any scenes together in Godfather 2,” says De Niro. “We did Heat about 13, 14 years ago and it was great, but we were only together for a few minutes on screen. When I said, `Well, what about Al?’ Jon just grabbed onto that.”
“Bob suggested I play the role,” recalls Pacino. “I read the script and felt it would be a good opportunity to work with Bob in a role I thought I could play.”
Speaking of working with his old friend and colleague, De Niro says: “If you know each other as long as we’ve known each other, you can draw on that background. And even if it’s a subtle sort of imperceptible thing, the comfort level is there because we have known each other so long. So interesting things kind of emerge.”
“Bob and I get along well-always have,” adds Pacino, “So we have a mutual trust which always helps. Everyone involved in the film knew immediately that Righteous Kill was becoming a once in a lifetime opportunity. “Once we knew we had them both, we all had to accept the reality of the responsibility,” says Emmett. “These are two legendary guys that the whole world looks at as the greatest actors of all time. Now we have to go make the movie.”
Screenwriter Russell Gewirtz hadn’t even considered the possibility of having two of Hollywood’s most honored actors in his second film. “I don’t think of actors when I write,” he says. “My characters have no faces, they’re not actors. They’re just who they are. In this case, what was most important to me was that the two characters had to be equally matched. You have to believe a relationship between these two, a brotherhood. And I can’t think of a better pairing than these two actors.”
Gewirtz burst onto the movie scene with his first film, Inside Man, an ingeniously plotted heist movie that was named one of the American Film Institute’s Movies of the Year for 2006. “After I finished writing Inside Man, I had this idea for a cop movie,” he says. “When I completed it, it took quite a while before it went anywhere. It wasn’t sent out to all the studios the way Inside Man had been. I didn’t get to buy that house I was looking at, and I got exposure to the long slow road of trying to get a movie made in Hollywood.
“After Inside Man hit, we got a lot of buzz and eventually the script made its way to Jon Avnet and Bob De Niro and then we had a movie,” he continues. “And then we got Al Pacino and we had an event.” Like Inside Man, Righteous Kill is packed with complicated characters, sharp dialogue and unexpected plot turns that counter audience expectations. In writing the movie, Gewirtz says he decided to begin from the end of the story and work backwards. “I came up with the twist first. When I write a script like this, I look for that one moment-generally at the end of the movie-that’s going to make people say, `What did I just see? I’ve got to watch this again.’ I had that feeling when I watched The Usual Suspects and it inspired me. That’s when I started thinking, `I wish I could do that.’”
In the world of Righteous Kill, things aren’t exactly as they appear, observes Avnet. “The storytelling is unusual. There’s a fascinating character drama at the center of the piece that has its origins in a friendship that is 30 years old. In this drama, you basically are unraveling the layers until you get to the core of the characters. What are their secrets? What are their vulnerabilities? What are their idiosyncrasies?”
Rosenberg believes these complex, fleshed-out characters make the story more compelling and emotionally resonant for audiences. “Too often the focus is on the twist in the plot instead of the characters,” says the producer. “Here, before you even get to the story, you’ve already gotten to know and love these two guys. They don’t necessarily make the right choices, but they make understandable, sympathetic choices and that’s what hooks you. Every thriller has got to have a few twists and turns, but if you don’t care about the characters then I don’t think you care about the twists”
Cowan anticipates the film will receive a lot of attention at home and abroad. “We’ve got two of the biggest stars in the world and I think people always like to see what they’re doing,” he says. “Plus, it’s a great cop thriller, and a complex psychological story. This movie is all amped up leading towards the third act and it’s a full-on rollercoaster ride trying to figure out how the person that you’ve invested all your time in is going to be able to get out of this situation.”
Producer Randall Emmett adds: “Audiences love the unknown, and they love trying to figure out what’s going to happen before it happens. We’re all like children, when we go to the movies, and we sit there, and we try to figure out is it going to be this ending, did he do it, then who did it, and that’s what attracts us all to thrillers.
“Righteous Kill definitely has a lot of great drama, great characters and De Niro and Pacino,” the producer continues. “But after the audience gets over that amazing moment of these two great actors working together, they’re going to enjoy this movie because there’s so much heart; there’s so much intensity.”
Casting Righteous Kill
With De Niro and Pacino signed on, the producers knew the film would attract a high-caliber cast, but they weren’t prepared for the onslaught of attention it received. “When we first started casting the movie, all of Hollywood heard about it,” says producer Lati Grobman. “We had every agent in town calling us. But we all only wanted what was right for the story, and we ended up with the perfect cast.”
Avnet is known as an actor’s director, having worked with some of Hollywood’s most respected stars including Robert Redford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathy Bates, Jessica Lange, Richard Gere and countless others.
“I love the process,” says Avnet. “I love trying to create an environment where actors are free to create. I hired Nancy Klopper as casting director having worked with her many times in the past. She was great. “I listen very carefully to actors, and even though I plan almost all the shots in the movie before I shoot, I’m much more interested in how they would perform it than how I may have conceptualized it. I am the safety net for the actors. I want them to stand on those marks, as James Cagney said, tell the truth.”
Avnet’s collaborative spirit impressed De Niro. “He is a very respectful director,” says the actor, who has himself directed two acclaimed films, The Good Shepherd and A Bronx Tale. “He knew what he wanted to get from us, and, at the same time, gave us enough room to be creative. You have to have that in order to get the best out of people.”
“Jon Avnet loves actors,” says Pacino. “That’s very helpful. He’s with you 150%. I would describe his directing style as fast and furious-but he knows what he’s doing.”
In addition to De Niro and Pacino, Righteous Kill’s dazzlingly diverse cast includes veteran actors and newcomers, plus a few unexpected choices, including Curtis Jackson (a.k.a. 50 Cent) and skateboard champion Rob Dyrdek.
“I think I treated everybody exactly the same,” says Avnet. “Donnie Wahlberg and John Leguizamo are no different than Al and Bob, in the sense that I say to them all, `Do you have any other ideas?’ It is very typical for me to work with actors over and over again.”
Carla Gugino plays crime scene detective Karen Corelli, whose dark personal life complicates her work relationships. “She is a person who’s such a perfectionist at work and then has this penchant for what you might say is rough sex,” says Gugino. “I wondered how realistic that was and what was fascinating was in talking to these people in this field, it became clear to me that it was actually something that was completely understandable.”
Gugino describes herself as pretty tough, but says she had never seen anything as disturbing as some of the crime scene photos she saw while preparing for the role. “The pictures really gave me some perspective,” she says. “I think that if you have to deal with that kind of horror on a daily basis, there’s a part of you that has to shut down in order to just survive and look at it very clinically.”
The actress was initially dismayed to find that all of her intimate scenes were scheduled in the first two days. “Those two days were pretty brutal, but having to delve in like that introduced me to the shadow side of the character.”
She calls her castmates “an extraordinary group of people. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, I mean it’s incredible. I remember the first time I saw them both standing there together, I think we were doing the camera test and they were talking. It was amazing because their voices are so iconic. To see them together in one frame was very powerful.
“And also Brian Dennehy and John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg,” she continues. “I always feel you want to work with the most incredible people you can work with to bring up your game, so to have the opportunity to work with all of these guys was definitely exciting. There was no walking through it; everybody was in there really digging in trying to figure it out.”
Tony Award winner Brian Dennehy plays the head of the homicide squad, Lieutenant Hingis. “I had to fight my way into this picture,” says the actor. “Most of the picture is Bob and Al playing off of each other and that is literally a once-in-a-lifetime event to work with two actors, two stars of this caliber, which is why I wanted to be there.
“Both Al and I are tremendously involved in the theater, which gives us a kind of a shorthand communication,” Dennehy says. “And Bob was just so open and friendly and accessible. I had met him before over the years, but never worked with him. You can’t help but feel a certain amount of intimidation when you’re confronted with these two legends.”
Dennehy, a huge fan of Avnet’s acclaimed drama Fried Green Tomatoes, says of the production, “It’s been a great experience. There are a bunch of people involved in this thing that have made it rather special and unique. You know, these things just don’t happen that much.” Avnet had already worked with Dennehy on Broadway when he produced “Inherit the Wind” this past year. “I like him as an actor. His theatrical background allows him to find the character in an economical manner.”
Rounding out the homicide detail are Donnie Wahlberg and John Leguizamo as partners Reilly and Perez, two up-and-coming cops competing with the older detectives to solve the mystery. Wahlberg and Avnet had become friends while working on the television series “Boomtown,” in which Wahlberg starred and which Avnet executive produced and directed.
“Donnie is very talented, very gifted improvisationally, as well as being able to stay on book,” says Avnet. “I always get a very, very fresh performance from him. A lot of our work took place months before we started shooting and it continued into rehearsals and shooting.”
Wahlberg says he would have been willing to sweep floors for the chance to work with Pacino and De Niro. “I actually got to go toe-to-toe with those guys, which was just tremendous fun, much more fun than I ever would have expected,” he says. “The only moment of nerves I had on this whole movie was during the softball game scene.
“I was pitching and Jon told me to make sure I was throwing strikes,” recalls the actor. “I said, `Don’t worry, I’ll throw strikes.’ But then Robert De Niro steps into the batter’s box, and as I’m about to pitch, it occurred to me, if this pitch is inside, I’m going to hit Robert De Niro. But if it’s outside, I’m going to have Jon Avnet screaming at me in front of everybody. I felt like I was trying to throw the last strike in the World Series. What are you going to do? I’d rather have Jon yell at me than hit Bob De Niro in the head, so I threw the pitch about six feet outside. Then I heard Jon Avnet screaming over a mega, `Donnie, you idiot, throw a strike!’”
Like so many others in the cast, Leguizamo calls this film a career highlight. “De Niro and Pacino have truthfully been my heroes,” says the actor, who grew up in New York. “When I saw De Niro in Mean Streets I thought, `I’ll never be that good, nobody could ever be that good.’ The same for Al in Dog Day Afternoon.”
“They both live in New York, you know,” Leguizamo continues. “There is something about being a New York actor that’s very different than being an actor from anywhere else. There’s a sense of reality, an edge. I tried to stay in New York for that very reason, to try to stay real and try to keep it together.” Working with Jon Avnet, he says, has been something of a surprise for him. “Jon’s a much more gentle, paternal type director than people think,” he says. “He really takes care of everybody. He’s like a coach-he comes back and he says that was good, we got what we wanted, we got to push hard, we got to do it a lot of times. He’s a real morale booster.”
For the role of drug dealer Spider, Avnet went with his instincts when he selected Curtis Jackson, a superstar in the music world, but still new to acting. “This is a smart guy,” says Avnet. “He read with me, rehearsed with me and then showed up at the reading with everyone and held his own. He wanted this. He knew that to stand up there with De Niro and Pacino, is not easy.”
Jackson admits to being anxious when he first met the pair. “It was at the table read. My legs were shaking underneath the table. They’ve been in so many movies that I’ve enjoyed that just being in the same room as them was exciting.”
“Being in scenes with De Niro and Pacino, I found myself picking up their habits and working like them,” he continues. “It felt like they were actually leading me through the scenes.”
Pacino has high praise for his co-stars. “Brian Dennehy is a consummate actor with a lot of experience and very easy to work with. Carla Gugino is extremely gifted and enjoyable to work with as are John Leguizamo, Donne Wahlberg and Curtis Jackson.”
Avnet also took a chance when he cast Rob Dyrdek, a professional skateboarder, in the small but important role of Rambo, a street pimp. “I thought I could get something fresh,” says the director. “The idea of a skateboard pimp, it felt right to me.”
Writer Gewirtz says that he never imagined having a cast this accomplished for his film. “Of course I never imagined the cast of Inside Man either,” he says. “I have been unbelievably lucky in the kind of actors who’ve responded to my writing. I guess now I’ve become accustomed to having dream casts.”
Anatomy Of A Thriller
Depicting the police work in the most realistic light possible was a priority for the filmmakers, which required assembling a team of experts to ensure authenticity.
constantly picking up the phone and calling one of these guys, even just for a line or how a guy would handle something. Neil Carter, who was a homicide detective, was very helpful in that area.”
Carter was with the NYPD for 24 years. After leaving the force, he carved out a second career as a film consultant, working on films including Inside Man, The Brave One, American Gangster and The Bourne Ultimatum. His job was to review the script and advise the director and actors on whatever questions they had regarding NYPD procedures.
Producer Daniel Rosenberg recalls: “When Detective Carter first read the script, he said to Russ, `You’ve been talking to some detectives.’ Russ spent the day convincing him the story was actually the product of his imagination. It really captures what it’s like to be a cop and that is a true testament to Russ as a writer.”
Carter says Righteous Kill accurately captures the frustration some cases engender in investigators. “You sometimes get the feeling that you’re swimming against the tide. There are cases that I worked on that went on for years. Even now that I’m retired, there’s still a case going on that I worked on for the last three years of my career. It sticks in my gut, because I really want to see this case resolved.”
The close relationship between the two lead detectives, Rooster and Turk, is also something Carter experienced first-hand. “Sometimes you spend more time with your partner on the job than you spend with your wife, your girlfriend, your boyfriend,” he says. “They may even know you better than your own family knows you. You have to trust your partner, because when you’re going through a door with somebody, you have to know that they got your back and vice versa. I know guys who have been partners for years and they’ve gone through two or three wives in that time.”
Carter also worked with the actors during gun training. “They used nine-millimeters on the range, which are standard issue for NYPD. I showed them how to hold a gun, how to do a combat stand, exactly the way we’re trained in the NYPD, and how to be prepared for a shootout. Your range training puts you in the right frame of mind for handling the gun. If it jams during a gunfight, you’ve already gone through the motions, so you’re ready.”
Armorer Ed Lighter supervised and provided weapons for Righteous Kill, which included Glock 19 9-millimeter pistols, Heckler & Koch MP5 K submachine guns and an M4, a variant of the M16 military rifle outfitted with an ultra short barrel for S.W.A.T work.
“Generally a prop man can handle small amounts of firearms,” says Lighter. “When there are a lot of weapons, that’s when they will call for an armorer on set. An armorer is specialized in two ways. They’re responsible for doing the modifications to firearms to make them shoot blanks. And that, in itself, is extremely complicated, depending upon the nature of the firearm. It can be like getting an elephant to fly.
“The next is supervising the actual use of the weapons to make sure that they are handled safely, that the actors have been instructed in their use and that technical elements are cared for so there’s no jam, because any mechanical device is subject to failure.”
Lighter says he was very impressed with Jon Avnet’s meticulous attention to safety on the set. “People have the misconception that blanks are caps of some sort, but they’re actually extremely dangerous. They have to be handled as if they were live ammunition. This director’s concern was more about getting things right safely than trying to get as much done as quickly as possible, which is really refreshing.”
While set in New York City, the film was primarily shot in and around Bridgeport, Connecticut. The 36-day shoot also included filming in Harlem, Queens and Brooklyn. Producer Rob Cowan says that the decision to shoot outside the Big Apple was primarily financial. “We looked at a couple different places to shoot, but the tax break in Connecticut was really terrific, especially for a movie of our size. The proximity to New York was great, too, because so many of our actors were based out of New York.”
The most populous city in Connecticut, Bridgeport was formerly a thriving manufacturing center with hundreds of mills and factories. The city’s traditional architecture and early 20th century urban atmosphere made it a convincing stand-in for New York. Still, “Locations had to be chosen carefully,” says Cowan. “We couldn’t always just walk in and shoot. For example, we found an old linen factory and converted the former offices into our precinct.”
Cinematographer Denis Lenoir, who previously worked with Avnet on the Golden Globe-nominated telefilm “Uprising,” (for which he won the ASC award for best cinematography) came to the set with a lot of ideas about how to recreate the claustrophobia and intensity for Righteous Kill. He put together a portfolio of movie stills for the director drawn from films set in New York, including Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead and John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. “This was very different from what we had done before, which is what we try to do every time,” says Lenoir. “On one hand, we wanted to do a film noir, a dark movie. But on the other hand we wanted to be naturalistic or realistic. These are two cops in Manhattan, not superheroes.”
“It is a very modern story, but by shooting in very high contrast, Denis gave it the feeling an older movie,” says Cowan. “He went for that edge.”
Lenoir’s other important consideration was making sure that the atmosphere he wanted to create didn’t obscure the actor’s faces in any way. “You have Robert De Niro and Al Pacino,” he says. “I can’t speak for other DP’s, but I don’t want to put them totally in the dark. I want to see any little thing they do with their lips, with their mouth, with their faces because that is where the story is told. So I decided that the way to give the illusion of darkness was by putting bright lights not on them but next to them.”
The director says there are two key elements to Righteous Kill that he hopes will bring audiences into the theaters. Bob and Al get to play New York City Detectives. I think they play characters that feel like a perfect fit for them. “The second thing is the rest of the cast-we’ve got Leguizamo, Donnie, Curtis, Rob, Carla. It’s a very deep group of actors. There’s a depth to the world. They complement our two stars well and hopefully create a reality that let’s Russell’s story come to life.”
Production notes provided by Overture Films.
Righteous Kill
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, 50 Cent, Carla Gugino, Donnie Wahlberg, Brian Dennehy, John Leguizamo, Dan Futterman, Trilby Glover, Rob Dyrdek, Mark Famiglietti
Directed by: Jon Avnet
Screenplay by: Russell Gerwitz
Release: September 12, 2008
MPAA Rating: R violence, pervasive language, some sexuality, drug use.
Studio: Overture Films
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $39,527,323 (55.9%)
Foreign: $31,236,936 (44.1%)
Total: $70,764,259 (Worldwide)