Alex Cross

Director Rob Cohen shoots believable action sequences, too. Nobody jumps the gap between skyscrapers or falls 40 feet, then gets up and runs away.

Where Freeman was warm but enigmatic, Perry is warm but empty.

Picture Alan Alda in the title role of "Dirty Harry," and you have a good idea why Tyler Perry playing a hard-edged cop in "Alex Cross" doesn't work. [19 Oct 2012]

Aside from these curious role reversals, though, Alex Cross is a mess. Drawing on every conceivable '80s B-movie action cliché and treating its beleaguered female characters like pieces of meat (literally, in one scene of butchery), director Rob Cohen squanders a surprisingly recognizable cast on a half-baked plot adapted from James Patterson's series of novels.

It's a courageous but misguided move on Perry's part; he has none of Freeman's soulful, nuanced subtlety, and watching him display the gamut of emotions called for in Marc Moss and Kerry Williamson's script is like watching the Hulk attempt Swan Lake.

A grim, dispiritingly stupid waste of time, energy, money and talent.

Expositional and often self-serious to the point of genuine awkwardness, the dialogue is never as haltingly unconvincing as when it's attempting to give some approximation of Alex Cross's essential looseness and good humor.

Slam-bang, high quality entertainment, as far as action films go, this is pretty damn epic, ignore all the critics, most of which like **** like the blair witch project, this is a hell **** time.

Not bad, thought it was going to be a lot worse. It was ok. There was alot of boring scenes too

As a long time fan of James Patterson's Alex Cross novels, I thought Morgan Freeman was the perfect choice to play Cross, and I loved Kiss The Girls. I was weary of a remake, especially one done by Tyler Perry, but to my surprise he was much better than expected, unfortunately, the film was not. Alex Cross has always been about beating criminals with his mind. The forensic psychologist is best known for his ability to out think rather than over power his opponents, but you'd never know it by watching this film. Alex Cross and his team are called in on a triple homicide, but the suspect had more on his mind then just his targets, and sets his sights on Cross and the team. There is a heavy focus right from the beginning on the bad guy, who we immediately see is Matthew Fox. To me this took all the mystery right out of the story, and instead of being a who done it, the film was about how to catch the bad guy. The writers didn't do that right either, as Alex Cross is blinded by rage and goes out guns blazing to fight and kill the assailant. While this may make for an exciting action film, it's not who or what Alex Cross is all about, and despite all the novels I've read, I felt like I didn't know the characters at all. Tyler Perry stars as Cross and shows that he's more than just a comedian dressed as an old woman. Perry was very intense and likeable, under different circumstances I would have really enjoyed his performance, but again, he wasn't playing the Alex Cross I know. He's paired with Lost's Matthew Fox, who has played the bad guy before. I love Fox as an actor, but he just doesn't have the look or temperament of a killer and wasn't very believable here. Alex Cross is one of my all time favorite characters, and the first time they put him on film, they did it right. The second time, wasn't one of Patterson's better stories, but still very well done. This time, Alex Cross has turned into John McLean, and while some people will love it, to me it just emphasized everything that is wrong with Hollywood today.

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.

Plodding, forgettable, occasionally funny on accident, and unforgivably bland, Alex Cross has a reputation of being one of the worst movies from 2012. While maybe not the worst movie from that year, the terribly mediocre script doesn't do this stinker any favors. Tyler Perry is sometimes okay, and the supporting cast isn't all that bad. Alex Cross is really a simple revenge story masquerading as something better.