Alex Cross

This moving picture contains thrills , unstoppable action , fighting , pursuits and lots of deaths , as it has a high body count . The cop and psychologist Alex Cross (Tyler Perry) works for the Detroit Police Department along with his colleague Tommy Kane (Edward Burns) , and promising rookie Monica Ashe (Rachel Nichols) investigating deaths of some criminals . At the beginning , it seems to be a reckoning. Alex Cross is on his last police duty and along way he finds out the murders result to be commited by a killer series nicknamed Picasso who's been torturing and killing wealthy businessmen in Detroit . While Cross is dedicated to his work , he's just as committed to his home life, and is excited to be aware his wife Maria (Carmen Ejogo) is pregnant once again . Soon when the assignment gets personal, Cross is pushed to the edge of his moral and psychological limits to end this once and for all. Don't ever cross Alex Cross !.

The film contains high-energy action , noisy thrills , struggles, emotion, and spectacular scenes with an impressive climax . It's a passable action movie plenty of thrills, chills , explosions , firepower, gun-play and breathtaking chases . The picture is thrilling and exciting, though also a routine actioner with no much sense at times . The flick contemplates the old themes of trust , friendship , vengeance , humiliation and cold violence . There are echoes here of many other action movies and behind the deceits , plot twists and manipulation . An adrenalitic thriller with unstopped action-packed and grisly violence , being loosely based on the novel Alex Cross by James Patterson and particularly on the character of the expert Forensic psychologist Cross . This is a nail-biting picture stars Tyler Perry, who's plunged into a highly dangerous cat and mouse game , vengeance and deception - where things are not always what they appear to be , in which the stubborn investigator refuses to be defeated , as he battles his way to an overwhelming ending . Morgan Freeman who played the two previous roles suggested the British Idris Elba (Mandela) ; however , eventually the charater was to Tyler Perry playing a lawman torn between justice and personal vendetta , he is a good actor but more adequate in his ordinary comedy genre than in mystery/thriller genre . His antagonist turns out to be Matthew Fox , famous from ¨Lost¨ series , here he lost weight with a strict diet and doing gym to earn muscle for playing the role , as he took about five months to prepare for his character which he felt was enough time not only to get his body into shape . There are continuous remarks in the novel "Alex Cross" to both Morgan Freeman and Tyler Perry, the references to Freeman pay tribute to his role as Cross in ¨Kiss the girls¨ (1997) by Gary Fleder and ¨Along came a spider¨ (2001) by Lee Tamahori .

The film is produced with high budget by John Friedberg , George Furla and writer James Patterson himself. The motion picture was regularly directed by Rob Cohen . A nice director of hits and one of the 1970's "baby moguls", Rob built a thriving career as a producer, before concentrating full time on directing from the 1990's, with high adrenaline action blockbusters such as ¨xXx¨ (2002) and ¨Dragon, Bruce Lee life¨ (1993). He is the creator of ¨The Fast and the Furious¨ (2001) saga , Universal Pictures' biggest franchise of all time. He often directs high-energy action films as ¨Daylight¨ (1996), ¨The Fast and the Furious¨ (2001), ¨xXx¨ (2002), and other inferior successes such as ¨Stealth¨ , ¨Skulls¨, ¨Dragonheart¨ , among others. Rating : 5/10 . Mediocre , only for Alex Cross saga followers.

It's not hard to figure out what's wrong with this movie. Skeptics may think Tyler Perry was a bad choice to fill in a young Morgan Freeman's shoes, but he was fine in the role. Plus, Matthew Fox as a psychopathic skinhead assassin is a lot of fun. Where the movie fails is in its haphazard direction, bland writing, and godawful editing. It's amazing the actors were able to recite this dialogue with a straight face.

The story of Alex Cross is a simple murder mystery: Alex Cross and his partner investigate a brutal crime scene and discover that they're after a professional killer referred to as Picasso. Things get personal and Cross plans to seek his revenge once and for all - standard crime thriller plot. The problem is when the characters start talking to each other. Honestly, it's laughable how bad some of this dialogue is, especially between Cross and his family. They throw in these "emotional" scenes to break up the action but all they do is make for a really awkward paced movie. It would be passable if the dialogue actually moved the plot forward or added depth to the characters but they don't, at all. There are some subplots that are introduced and never brought up again, e.g. Alex Cross becoming an FBI agent. What was the point of even including that?

The main reason to watch this movie is for Matthew Fox. He plays a sadist who is "fascinated by pain." Not very original but who cares, it's Matthew Fox playing a 130 pound unhinged lunatic. The scenes in which we see him doing his job - stalking his targets, infiltrating their houses, taking out their body guards and whatnot - are the most interesting parts of the movie. He's the only character given a clear cut motive and enough development to make him a passable antagonist.

Unfortunately, Perry isn't given nearly as much to work with. He's a generic detective with the name Alex Cross who acts as a poor man's Sherlock Holmes. His whole objective is to get into the mind of this madman while trying to maintain a steady family life, but instead of weaving tension between these two factors and having them play off one another, the writer/director think it's more effective to jump from one setting to another with no momentum building or rising tension whatsoever. Also, there wasn't enough psychological warfare between Cross and Picasso for there to be a compelling hero-villain dynamic. They try to do that in a couple scenes, but it's so poorly written that you don't believe a word of it.

The lack of good characters and dialogue would almost be forgivable if the action was excellent, but unfortunately that is not the case. The action scenes consist of shaky cam galore, constant jump cuts, and incomprehensible choreography. The climax of this movie, if you can even call it that, is a horrifically edited nightmare. You can hardly make out what's going, and once it ends you're just like, "Okay. Is that it?"

Again, the leads save this movie from being a total bomb. I was admittedly entertained for a good portion of the movie despite its stupid dialogue. None of it is inventive or new; it's just your run-of-the-mill murder mystery that is low on thrills and high on cheese. It's worth a one time watch if it's on TV or something, but the main thing you'll remember from Alex Cross is the criminally wasted talent.

If you think you might like this movie from the trailer...go see it and ignore the bad reviews...its a good movie. If this is the worse movie you seen - you haven't seen very much. As for being predictable - easy to say that- and there aren't many movies out there thats not a bit predictable. The acting was OK, yes it really was - some of the lines they had to deliver weren't the best, but that isn't the actors fault. The thing that keep this from being really good was the directing, camera work, and editing. It really reduced the quality of the movie. Often you will see a shaking camera during a action scene - we all seen that before - but this movie takes it too a whole new level of shaking camera...who ever decided to do this and edit it so badly -needs to take the blame here on this movie for it not being what it could have. But overall for me - last night after the football game, it was an enjoyable evening at the movies.

When you make an action crime film please remember to connect all the dots so that we, the audience, can achieve some sense of the story line. The trailer was a slice of many of the best scenes but, unfortunately the real film falls so sadly short of good storyline due to poor dialog and some jerky acting that the viewer struggles to make sense of the various actors.

If this film had been prescreened (proof read) any average movie-goer would have pointed out just how poorly made it was. I sensed that Tyler Perry gave a over acted performance. I really wanted to like this film when it first came out but, it just was so boring and unimaginative I began to realize that it was due to faulty construction of scenes and character's dialog. This was mostly due to the director.

Being that I grew up watching party of five, I never could've pictured Matthew Fox (the good-looking older responsible brother in POF) being a psychopath but I felt he played the character well.

Was it a blockbuster, no but it still held my attention. Maybe that's because I didn't have any expectations going in as I never read the books. Bottom line is, I was entertained and have seen far worse.