Righteous Kill Production Info

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino Star in New Mystery Thriller

Sep 11, 2008

Two veteran police detectives search for a vigilante serial killer in New York City.

Highly decorated police detectives Turk (Robert De Niro) and Rooster (Al Pacino) get assigned to an especially difficult case: A murderer targets violent felons who have gone unpunished by the criminal justice system. The police find each victim accompanied by a four-line poem in which the killer justifies his actions and commends himself for ridding Manhattan’s streets of known criminals. Aided by a local drug dealer (Curtis Jackson, a.k.a. 50 Cent), Turk and Rooster follow clues until they reluctantly discover the killer may be someone on the police force.

Former NYPD homicide detective Neil Carter served as technical advisor on the film. After working 24 years on the police force, Carter began work as a film consultant and worked on films including The Bourne Ultimatum and The Brave One. With Righteous Kill, he reviewed the script, helped with gun training, advised the director, and answered questions from the actors about police procedures.

The weapons used in the film include Glock 19 9-millimeter pistols, Heckler & Koch MP5 K submachine guns and an M4, a variant of the M16 military rifle. So many weapons were required on the set, that armorer Ed Lighter was called in to supervise the use of the weapons by the actors and modify the guns to make them shoot blanks.

Although set in New York City, the 36-day shoot took place in and around Bridgeport, Connecticut. The reason for working outside of New York City was to keep costs down by taking advantage of Connecticut’s tax break incentive. An old linen factory in Bridgeport had offices that the production team converted into the police precinct. Filming also took place in Harlem, Queens, and Brooklyn, New York.

Other than brief screen time together during Heat (they shared no scenes in The Godfather 2), movie audiences haven’t seen iconic Oscar-winning actors and off-screen friends Robert De Niro and Al Pacino together. Here, they share nearly every scene, blending their unique styles and dramatic intensity.

Carla Gugino plays a crime scene investigator with a dark personal life that includes rough intimate encounters. In preparing for her role, Gugino viewed actual crime scene photographs with highly disturbing images. “The pictures really gave me some perspective,” Gugino said in a prepared statement. “I think that if you have to deal with that kind of horror on a daily basis, there’s a part of you that has to shut down in order to just survive and look at it very clinically.”

Additional cast members include Donnie Wahlberg and John Leguizamo as two younger partners on the police force, Brian Dennehy as the head of the homicide squad, and skateboard champion Rob Dyrdek as a skateboard pimp.

The film’s director, Jon Avnet, is best known for directing Fried Green Tomatoes, a Southern drama far removed from this gritty New York City thriller.

The script begins from the end of the story and works backward as complicated characters and unexpected plot twists keep the audience guessing. Righteous Kill was written by Russell Gewirtz, whose first film, the heist movie Inside Man, was named one of the American Film Institute’s Movies of the Year for 2006.

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