I almost made a mistake and didn’t look up a single detail about Alex Cross before I went to see it in theaters. Thankfully, a friend of mine let me in on a not so secretive secret. Alex Cross is actually a pretty famous character, and has been in sixteen books! Maybe if I knew how to read I would have known that sooner. But more importantly, I found out that this is not the first time Alex Cross has been in film, this is his third time! The first two were over a decade ago, Kiss The Girls and Along Came A Spider, both times being played by Morgan Freeman.
Pretty big shoes to fill.
But technically Tyler Perry has big feet.
So who is Alex Cross (Tyler Perry) and why is he so important? Well, in this version he lives in Detroit, is a homicide detective, and also has a doctorate in psychology. Yep, he can read people, one of those guys. The FBI really wants him to move to DC and become a profiler, but moving his wife (Carmen Ejogo) who also has a career and kids to a new city would be quite difficult.
Besides, he has a good thing going with his partners, Tommy (Edward Burns), a friend of his since grade school, and Monica (Rachel Nichols). The hours can suck, but at least he is doing a good thing for Detroit.
But when a man who calls himself The Butcher (Matthew Fox) begins to target high income individuals who are working on bringing back Detroit to its past prime, Cross is given the problem of trying to analyze someone who might be so far off the rails psychologically that he is entirely unpredictable.
No no no, that’s not what I meant by off the rails.
Never before have I been so torn after watching a movie. While watching it, I was shaking my head at how bad overall it was. The dialogue never felt natural. Most characters just seemed fake, no realistic characteristics at all. The plot was actually very basic, the reason the killings I figured out pretty early, and Matthew Fox creeped me out.
However, multiple times throughout the movie I found myself shocked and surprised at the events that were unraveling. Yes, I knew how it would end, but could not guess the journey. Most of it came from death, because hey, people die in this movie and each time I didn’t think it would happen. I did almost tear up a little bit during one scene with Cross and his daughter.
Usually when I can’t tell how I feel about a movie, I give it a neutral review and run away. But here is some more anyways. Technically, Freeman wasn’t that good in those movies either. They were normal crime based films, and Alex Cross didn’t seem too special. Also, originally this role was supposed to be played by Idris Elba. That should just make you rage with the potential energy that film would have created.
Overall, I think this film will most likely be ignored, and I am not just saying that because of there only being three people in the theater on an opening night showing.