Don't Ever Cross Alex Cross
Rating: 2/10
Running Time: 101 minutes
US Certificate: 15
Like cheese and beer Morgan Freeman makes almost everything better (except 1998’s Hard Rain but everyone’s allowed an off day). So to take Morgan Freeman out would obviously make a film worse. Alex Cross is an MG-lite follow up to Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider and the latest adaptation of James Patterson’s Alex Cross series and safe to say it’s not the best. The plot sees Alex (Perry), newly employed as an FBI agent, put on the case of a insane assassin (Fox) who tortured a woman and her two bodyguards before setting his sights on a businessman (Daehn). Unfortunately, their man finds out the identities of Alex Cross and his two fellow detectives and goes after them and their families.
Rob Cohen (The Fast and The Furious) really does do a poor directing job all round and Alex Cross is basically a 1970s made for TV movie in its extremely amateurish execution and has no place in today’s world of film. You’d think that someone who could make Vin Diesel semi-watchable could pull this off but it just wasn’t to be. The plot is very basic and straightforward, easy to predict and not exactly taxing whilst the character development is non-existent.
Importantly, Tyler Perry is no Morgan Freeman. In fact, he’s no Adam Sandler or Hulk Hogan either. He’s not alone in the bad acting stakes as Fox flounders and Carmen Ejogo shares no chemistry with Perry as Cross’s wife. It’s not entirely their fault as they’re dealing with paperthin characters with unclear motives and appalling, unrealistic dialogue. The action is not bad, except when the mega-shaky cam comes into play, but maybe that’s just because the characters stop talking for a minute. There are so many good thrillers out there, don’t bother watching this one as I think I’ve given you enough reasons.
It's Got: Poor acting, awful dialogue, no Morgan Freeman
It Needs: To look and feel less amateurish, some character development, some decent action
Summary
Morgan Freeman is just one thing of many that this amateurish thriller needs to be in any way engaging. Poor.