Detective Alex Cross is called in to investigate a “Four Roses” killing where a beautiful woman and her bodyguards were murdered at home in an upscale neighborhood.   Cross dubs the killer as Picasso because he stayed around to sketch his victim’s pain on a charcoal drawing after cutting off all of her fingers.  Picasso has two more targets on his list- businessmen at the top of an international company.   Cross races to stop Picasso and keep his family safe from the sadistic pain Picasso wants to inflict on his victims.

 

ALEX CROSS has some really good locations and a great cast.  Tyler Perry isn’t bad as Alex Cross, but I always will wonder how Idris Elba would have played the famous literary character (he was originally cast for the film under the original director David Twohy).   The film plays out as an average action cop film where the script doesn’t rise to the level of the previous two films with the character of Alex Cross (KISS THE GIRLS and ALONG CAME A SPIDER with both starring Morgan Freeman as Cross).   Sometimes the up close camera angles come off as too much shaky camera work which can be hard on the eyes on a big screen (but it will probably play better on a TV screen).   ALEX CROSS is my least favorite of Rob Cohen’s films (I think XXX is Cohen’s best film and Justin Lin directed better FAST AND THE FURIOUS films than Cohen ever could).   The story could have been better if they didn’t end up with a script that breezes over character development in many instances to focus on action scenes and suspense instead.    Also if you’re a fan of the novel CROSS, this movie is a very loose adaptation of the novel and you may come away disappointed if you’re looking for an adaptation of the novel.   I hope the screenplay is a better effort than this rewritten hack job (which has some lazy story shortcuts) which is ALEX CROSS since QED has confirmed Tyler Perry will be back for the sequel DOUBLE CROSS.

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Audio commentary with director Rob Cohen

 

Four deleted scenes cut for pacing reasons

THE PSYCHOLOGIST AND THE BUTCHER: ADAPTING AND FILMING ALEX CROSS-  a fourteen minute featurette that looks at the making of the film and James Patterson comments how Tyler Perry’s version of Cross is much closer to the Cross character in the novels.

 

FINAL ANALYSIS:  ALEX CROSS focuses more on action while barely covering character development.  This adaptation of CROSS doesn’t come close to the great adaptations of the other Alex Cross novels (starring Morgan Freeman).   Rent it instead of buying it.

 

This review is (c)2-7-2013 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com