As big of an action movie junkie that I am, I must say that Alex Cross never registered on my to-watch
radar. After seeing the film, my
preconceived notions were confirmed. Alex Cross comes
across as a predictable and uninteresting film with an unlikely actor (Tyler
Perry, who takes over for a much better suited Morgan Freeman) playing the
title character.
The
movie has a pretty simple premise; after Washington DC detective Alex Cross is
told that a family member has been murdered, he vows to track down the killer.
He soon discovers that she was not his first victim and (surprise!) things are
not what they seem.
Unless
you are an established action/ drama franchise, movies like this will always be
categorized as James Bond-ish. Unfortunately (thought not surprisingly) Alex Cross did not meet any expectations of your typical Bond adventure.
Tyler Perry does not come across
as the serious, hard noise, FBI detective that he is trying to depict, and Matthew
Fox does look fit enough to play his part as Picasso. His character falls in line with the
predictability of every other murderous character you have seen before.
Edward
Burns was acceptable as Alex's partner, and Rachel Nicols does okay, ultimately
giving the film a minor saving grace. Unfortunately, I was not excited with basically
everything else in the movie. The
rest of the acting was simply not good, the stunts, aside from a cool fight
scene in a business office, were pretty average at best, and the script was too
heavy-handed and convenient. In short,
I felt the movie was trying to be too "hard" for what's it's own good.
To be fair, I have not read any of
the books by James Patterson or seen either of the previous two films featuring
Detective Cross. Additionally, I
have never seen a Tyler Perry movie all the way through (though I can't say
that I ever was his target audience).
All of this adds up to make Alex
Cross a very difficult film for me to watch. The moving parts never quite came together to form a film
that was anything better than average.
I'm still scratching my head at how Burns ever got involved with this
mess in the first place.
