REVIEW: Alex Cross

Literature to film adaptions have always been hot property. It's pretty much a given that the film will have a built in fan base from the books, but will also hopefully bring in more fans, with the potential for merchandise being quite high (an easy one being to rebrand the book as a "movie tie-in edition").

However, it's never going to be an easy ride to please existing fans and new ones. The old fans want to see a film version of the book they have read, whereas the new fans want action, violence and romance (aka. the basics). Just have a look at One For The Money for an example of how to get it drastically wrong.

Alex Cross is a a film based on a series of books by James Patterson. A series of books - KERCHING! The film follows a homicide detective, Alex Cross (Tyler Perry) who lives a happy life in Detroit with his wife, Maria (Carmen Ejogo), their children and thier Grandmother, Nana Mama (Cicely Tyson). Lead by Richard Brookwell (John C. McGinley), his long standing partner since school, Tommy Kane (Edward Burns) and their colleague, Monica Ashe (Rachel Nichols), the team soon start investigating some terrible torture murders. The murderer is soon nicknamed Picasso (Matthew Fox), because he keeps leaving drawings of his victims behind with clues as to who is going to be next. They soon make a link that the murders are revolving around German Businessman, Erich Nunmacher (Werner Daehn) and billionaire CEO, Leon Mercier (Jean Reno) and plans to attack them at a public conference. When the Picasso murders turn personal against Cross and his partner Kane, they vow to hunt down and kill the Picasso killer, even if it means putting their own lives on the line.

Alex Cross is a film that barely makes any kind of impact. I haven't read the original source material, but doing a slight bit of research online reveals how loosely the film is actually related to the book series and how many changes the filmmakers actually made makes me think that this is a film version in name only. If you have to change character names and motives for their actions, then why not make your own film? Having said that, the plot for this film felt more like an idea for a TV pilot rather than a film. There was hardly any big set pieces that set this film out from small screen adaptations (such as 24 or Dexter) and most of the conflict came from the characters.

Which brings me onto my next point, the casting for this film was completely off. Tyler Perry felt like he was being forced to do this film and had zero chemistry with his on-screen wife, Carmen Ejogo or his life-long partner, Edward Burns. It was like they barely knew each other, yet Perry's character was supposed to be having his third child with his wife and had known his work partner since they were at school together. When Perry and Burns were exchanging lifelong memories in the many downtime moments in the film, it felt like they were just going through the motions of the words written in the script rather than having any emotional investment. I guess it just made it so obvious after seeing End of Watch, a film which has many flaws of its own but got the on-screen chemistry of its leads spot on.

Which brings me onto my next point, for an action/thriller film there were certainly plenty of boring moments. It felt like every single scene was entered too early, providing the audience with too much bogged down dialogue which didn't push the plot or characters forward. Banter in the car between Perry and Burns in the car before they got to the first Picasso crime scene was boring and dull. Any date nights and dialogue between Perry and Ejogo were boring and lacked any spark. The woman was pregnant for crying out loud, yet Perry didn't seem to have much of a reaction (I know it was going to be his third child with her, but still!)

Finally, the worst point of Alex Cross was the fact that when the film finally did pick up in the third act, the camera work was so damn shaky that you could literally see nothing that was happening. I'm all for shaky, hand-held camera work when necessary - heck, I could even stand a bit of the Bourne Identity's most shaky moments - but Alex Cross was so shaky that it was almost like it was trying to hide some bad production values or direction. With an ending reminiscent of Beyonce's so-bad-its-good thriller Obsessed, where the villain is left hanging from a damaged ceiling, not even then could it rack up the tension. Which is strange, because at the mid-point of the film, two successive events happen so quickly that it was easy for the film to create an atmosphere of "anything could literally happen" and "anyone could die at any minute". However, the third act is so paint-by-numbers that this is quickly diminished.

So, Alex Cross is a film that lies to its audience in the first instance by promising them an adaption of a book series, but actually delivers something else. It then disappoints its audience by being a lacklustre action film and a boring thriller film. It just fails on all accounts.

* / *****