Alex Cross (2012)

Very disappointing...

good back-story, and good acting

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Blistering performances.

I am a skilled seer of movie flaws, and I saw nothing wrong with this story. It was great, it was unpredictable, it was realistic, it was a ride. Somebody gave me this movie, and my first thought was "Madea as a super-cop? I'm not sure I've got an hour and a half to spare for that." So, I was also guilty of typecasting, before I watched it. But I didn't get stuck on that, I was proven wrong and I'm not ashamed to admit I presumed wrongly about it. I think other folks made the same presumption and are too prideful to admit they were wrong. Also, I think mundane folks get butthurt when creative folks show more than one skill. So, the main star is a joker who's not joking. It's called range, and he should be appreciated for it, not penalized. Some of the criticisms I've seen are far reached for. People determined to bash will find a reason if they have to invent one.

. . . back in Detroit, when he was Madea. It's as if director Rob Cohen was bankrolled to make history's most ridiculous cop film ever. His cynical treatment suggests that the FBI recruited ALEX CROSS (portrayed by Mr. Freeman in two earlier films set AFTER this "prequel") because Cross was more of a rogue operator\"loose cannon" than Col. Oliver North. Cross is willing to bludgeon fellow (but HONEST) cops, return murder weapons to the known killers, manufacture illegal weapons, plant "evidence" to frame suspects on capital charges, and summarily execute unarmed citizens. The one thing that Cross is NOT good at is figuring out criminals and solving or preventing crimes, as he enables the crooks to rub out one of his partners, plus his wife, as well as most of the non-Black population of the Motor City. To make matters worse, LOST's heroic Dr. Jack is reduced here to cutting off hot chicks' fingers for the fun of it (when he's not destroying guys twice his size in cage fights). Yet when Matthew Fox ("Dr. Jack") faces Tyler Perry ("Madea") Mano A Mano, Madea makes mincemeat of a guy who up till then has been twice as tough and ten times as smart as anyone else on screen here. It's as if somebody spiked Popeye's spinach with stupid pills. The only thing about ALEX CROSS that rings true is that everyone DOES flee Detroit sooner rather than later!

By the time this film was available on DVD in early 2013, two more books - Merry Christmas, Alex Cross & Alex Cross, Run - will have been released, The films have not been nearly as steady, only getting its third cinematic treatment and the first since 2001's Along Came a Spider. Patterson's busily stalked protagonist did fairly well at the box office if not inspiring critics into believing he was worth following for another eighteen adventures. Fans of Patterson's airport fiction might disagree despite whatever objections they had between the films and the varying text. New fans are being sought out for the franchise reboot though and they should be mostly pleased. Considering they are used to ham-handed acting, amateurish fimmaking, cartoonish villains, hypocritical motivations and a touch of old broad sass, they should be right at home watching Tyler Perry take the lead.As the new era begins, Alex Cross is once again chasing down another psychopath and saving a battered white girl. Along with his select team, childhood friend Tommy Kane and Monica Ashe - Who are secretly hooking up behind the boss' back - they investigate crimes of some unspecified nature in the greater Detroit area. Their special unit is hardly defined by anything other than Alec being such a master of deduction that he can tell his wife had coffee based on the blouse stain big enough to be spotted by a Fisher Price telescope from Pluto. Other than dealing with the occasional crime scene, life is good for "Detective Doctor" Alex Cross who is on the short list for an FBI job in Washington and he has just been told there's another little Cross on the way.Also on the way is another psycho. This one, played by Matthew Fox, is a professional assassin who calls himself "The Butcher" but is referred to as "Picasso" by Tommy based on him leaving a drawing at at recent upscale massacre. There is a mystery benefactor behind The Butcher's recent spree which includes getting into underground MMA fights, paralyzing women with a special drug, and concocting elaborate break-ins to take out a French financial specialist. When Cross and Co. disrupt the latter, The Butcher takes to being bullet-grazed worse that being punched in the face.There is a momentary fascination with the film in figuring out precisely what Fox's psychotic villain is really up to. How does buying one's way into a brutal fight connect to a stolen laptop, what's on it and how it leads to international finance? Just who is Jean Reno's one-scene millionaire is not only superfluous suspect available to be funding The Butcher? Do professional mercenaries go off-script so often to take on personal vendettas after getting a little boo-boo from their adversary For ever answer revealed in Alex Cross - and few are really offered - it opens up ten different logical conundrums over just how brilliant the particular cat and mouse really are. Loosely based on Patterson's prequel novel Cross, the screenplay by first-timer Kerry Williamson and Marc Moss - whose only previous credit is the adaptation of Patterson's Along Came a Spider - actually gets less complicated and more boring as things get pieced together. What begins as a ludicrous police procedural becomes an even more ludicrous revenge thriller that asks viewers to believe this morally-principled Sherlock-wannabe is not just ready to turn into The Punisher but also possesses the superskills necessary for an over-weight, out-of-shape, dopey, doughy detective to take on a cage fighter who overreacts to taking a single punch. There has not been a less convincing avenging angel that Tyler Perry's Alex Cross since Thomas Jane portrayed the comic world's Frank Castle by interrogating a suspect with a melting popsicle.The stakes in Alex Cross are raised even further with the kind of vengeful horror that most professional assassins would admit is against the code. Both of the Taken films pushed the boundaries of the ratings system but did so under a kind of unwritten guide that throat-punching is less graphic than the more macho-violent fare that Sylvester Stallone has done in his Rambo and Expendable films. Alex Cross will never be confused with those, but its violence is shocking for an MPAA-rated "PG-13" mystery thriller. The connection between sexual fetish and murder is pushed during a torture scene. No less that two other crimes are committed towards women with one worthy of a funeral and the other nothing more than a cell phone snapshot. Patterson's specialty of bruising-up the fairer sex received an "R" rating when Kiss the Girls came out. Fifteen years later, viewers are apparently so numb that it can be extrapolated even while being dumbed down for those used to Perry's cartoonish portrayals of man-on-woman crimes.All such shocking moments of Alex Cross could be all part of some calculated plan for Perry to prove that he is going hard in trying to prove what a serious, demonstrative actor he can be. Most would recommend a stint in acting classes for starters which co-star Matthew Fox is more than happy to teach. First lesson: Act with the eyes. Bug them out as far as possible to prove the depth of the character's villainy. The originally cast Idris Elba as Cross would have had to take the class on keeping a straight face in the middle of this nonsense. Lesson two goes to director Rob Cohen. With no competency as an action director and stars was wooden as Perry and Burns, shake the camera as much as humanly possible to justify urgency. James Cameron could not make a call to OnStar more dramatically riveting. Mainly because he would never create and action sequence around a call to OnStar. Alex Cross is equally silly, boring, offensive and implausible which are also its best qualities if the viewer is in a mocking kind of mood.

I have long been a fan of the John Patterson series of books about the Alex Cross character and have read almost all of them. I read "Cross" which is the book this movie was based on. Too bad the writers and producers did not read it before making the movie.First of all, the good about the movie. Tyler Perry fits the Alex Cross character description as given by James Patterson in the books more than Morgan Freeman did in the earlier movies (a resemblance to a 40 year old Mohammad Ali and Freeman sure is not that). There is enough plot to keep you interested and some pretty good stunts and special effects to keep you stimulated.The bad is that it had little to do with the book. Alex Cross was single throughout the book series because his wife had been killed many years earlier. His partner, John Sampson, is absent and replaced with a different character. Cross is already working for The FBI in the book. The story takes place in Washington DC, not Detroit. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. On top of that, the plot was different as was the ending. I believe that if you want to base a movie on a book, it should at least resemble the book.The next movie is supposed to be "Double Cross" which brings back the Kyle Craig character. There needs to be at least some background on Craig, his FBI ties, his relationship to Cross and to the Mastermind before this movie can become viable. Absent this, it will just be another movie that has no relationship to the book it is based on. Bottom line is-if you just enjoy action, suspense, mystery, detective movies, you will enjoy this. If you are a fan of the Alex Cross series and somewhat of a purest, you will be disappointed.