Review of Alex Cross (2012) by Dawdlingpoet — 28 Nov 2021

I can't say I was overly impressed by this film. For a start, I should perhaps say that I've read the majority of James Pattersons' Alex Cross novels, a couple of years or so ago. I remember hearing about this film coming out at the time, so I had high hopes for it. I've seen previous films starring Morgan Freeman, which weren't too bad, so I wondered how this would do.

I found this film in general to be very formulaic - the villain is certainly easy to despise, both sounds and looks sinister and is very sudden and hyperactive, with a high level of bloodthirst, which will no doubt put some people off. The graphic, bloody content, violence wise, is somewhat gory but its not what I'd say is especially original or new as such. I will have read the novel(s) the story is based on, although I can't recall exactly which ones they are but I remember thinking at the start that it seemed a bit confusing, in that there wasn't much background given to the characters or explanation in general given to what was going on. It was a bit like watching an episode mid-way through a series, or a second film from a trilogy franchise. I couldn't help but feel that this film was quite sloppily handled, in terms of the script, the amount of character development provided and so on. I noticed there's a fairly heavy use of stringed music throughout to accentuate the slower, sinister scenes, as well as faster frantic scenes featuring more dance style pieces, with heavier bass lines. It was quite an engrossing watch in general, when the various fight scenes come on and trying to guess the outcome of certain situations but again there was something that made it feel almost lazily formulaic. I suppose if you've seen the other films based on novels about this character, for example Kiss The Girls, then you'll have a good idea what to expect.

This is a pretty watchable, sometimes quite engrossing watch but yet it definitely lacked some substance - maybe its just that I'm not so keen on gory violent action films but I don't think its purely that. Having read the books about this character, I can't help but feel that this potentially could have been much better. There's a sentimentality that comes across as somewhat forced and it just doesn't really 'gel well', the mix of both sentimental, family and relationship related scenes alongside the more gory, violent scenes.

This film has a running time of around an hour and fifty minutes, which is probably about the average for this type of film. I'm glad it wasn't too much longer, as I have a feeling it would have become quite tedious. Its a shame, as I think this could have been a much better film but it just didn't seem to work well.

Funnily enough, no I wouldn't recommend this film. It is fairly engrossing and I suppose its an easy watch but its definitely lacking substance. There are other psychological thrillers and action films that I've enjoyed a lot more - in this instance, I'd probably think of Denzel Washington films, their quite similar to this and most of those are better than this too.