Posted: 01/05/2009

DVD Contest: “Righteous Kill” on DVD or Blu-Ray!

by Del Harvey

Academy Award Winners Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino star in “Righteous Kill,” releasing on DVD and Blu-Ray Tuesday, January 6th.

Want your copy? Enter our contest! It’s simple, just email filmmonthly@gmail.com and include your name, address, and tell us which you’d prefer – Blu-Ray or DVD. We’ll hold our drawing on Tuesday, January 13th, and announce the winner that evening.

Academy Award® winners and box-office superstars Robert De Niro (Oscar® winner for The Godfather – Part II and Raging Bull) and Al Pacino (Oscar® winner for Scent of a Woman) set the screen on fire in the incendiary suspense thriller Righteous Kill, which will get the new year off to an explosive start when it makes its eagerly anticipated DVD and Blu-ray debut on January 6, 2009 (pre-book: December 4, 2008). Righteous Kill is directed by Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes, 88 Minutes) from an original screenplay by Russell Gewirtz (Inside Man). SRP is $29.98 for the DVD and $39.98 for the exclusive Blu-ray.

With 14 Academy Award® nominations between them, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are among the most revered and celebrated actors of our time, yet Righteous Kill marks the first time that they’ve shared more than fleeting screen time. They previously appeared separately in The Godfather Part II, and more than twenty years later had one brief scene together in 1995’s Heat.

The Righteous Kill DVD will boast two bonus featurettes: The Investigation: An In-Depth Look at Righteous Kill and The Thin Blue Line: An Exploration of Cops & Criminals, audio commentary with producer/director Jon Avnet and the theatrical trailer. The Righteous Kill exclusive Blu-ray Edition is a 2-disc set that also includes a digital copy of the film and BD-Live features.

Synopsis: After 30 years as partners in the pressure cooker environment of the NYPD, highly decorated Detectives David Fisk (Pacino) and Thomas Cowan (De Niro) should be ready for retirement, but aren’t. Before they can hang up their badges, they are called in to investigate the murder of a notorious pimp, which appears to have ties to a case they solved years before. Like the original murder, the victim is a suspected criminal whose body is found accompanied by a four line poem justifying the killing. When additional crimes take place, it becomes clear the detectives are looking for a serial killer, one who targets criminals that have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system. His mission is to do what the cops can’t do on their own—take the culprits off the streets for good. The similarities between the recent killings and their earlier case raise a nagging question: Did they put the wrong man behind bars?

Del Harvey is the founder of Film Monthly, a film teacher, a writer and a film critic in Chicago.

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