Review: Alex Cross
"Tyler Perry should probably stick to comedy," was my initial reaction to his first feature performance in a dramatic role. With Alex Cross, director Rob Cohen (Dragonheart, xXx) delivers a cinematic weak tea. Based on the James Patterson novel Cross, this unremarkable film plays like one of Will Smith's rejected scripts.
Perry's performance is by no means the worst part of the movie. Cohen's use of shaky-cam here rivals J.J. Abrams' obsessive overuse of lens flare. A warning to anyone prone to motion sickness should be presented upon purchase of a ticket. Many scenes -- even non-action scenes -- look like they were shot from a helmet-cam worn on top of Richard Simmons's head. This spoils the view of some really interesting locations.
The showstopper, though, is Matthew Fox, who underwent an intense regimen of mixed martial arts to physically transform himself for a film that barely shows the results. He will be remembered for his role in Alex Cross as one of cinema's most absurd villians, known only as Picasso, a man who literally gets off on watching other people suffer. Fox alternates between a bug-eyed expression akin to someone suffering constipation when he's supposed to be angry (or thoughtful or anything else) and a disturbing beatific closed-eyes smile as if experiencing the big "O" moments after hearing someone scream in pain.
The script sets up the inevitable fight between these two characters: the aforementioned Picasso, a super-assassin who is supposed to be undetectable and untraceable, and Alex Cross, a super-detective who is supposed to be able to "tell you had scrambled eggs for breakfast from 100 yards away." But instead of a cat-and-mouse game, it's more like cat-and-cat food. Cross never has to struggle to track down the world's greatest assassin, who then has no trouble locating the hero and situating himself in a hotel room across the street with a sniper rifle anytime, day or night.
And this brings us full circle to Perry's performance in the title role. One minute he's trying to stop a crazed assassin, and the next he's a gentle father talking to his children. In both scenes, he displays the same emotions. Flat, like stale soda, he barely reacts to the most horrible things he sees. I mentioned Will Smith, because I couldn't help thinking how Smith would be kicking ass and wisecracking, livening up scenes where Perry's Cross is barely awake. A year from now, Alex Cross will be remembered for Fox's hilariously bad villain than Perry's weakly acted hero.