R.I.P.D. Review - Sometimes they come back

There are some advantages in adapting a nearly unknown comicbook into a movie: there’s no huge fandom that will complain about the inevitable changes made on the original material, with a following creative freedom for director and writer(s) that surely helps in the making of the movie. That’s the case of Peter M. Lenkov‘s Rest In Peace Department, published by Dark Horse Comics. Despite spawning a couple of miniseries (R.I.P.D. and R.I.P.D.: City of the Damned), this is not exactly a widely known and appreciated universe, which made the job for Universal quite easy. And who better than Robert Schwentke, the director who completely changed Warren Ellis’ depressing and ultraviolent Red transforming it into the brilliant and light-hearted RED, to direct R.I.P.D.?

The story is not the most original one, but it works: a usually honest cop, Nick Walker, steals some gold from a bunch of drug dealers he kills in action. Taken by remorse, he decides to give it back as evidence, but his partner (Bobby Hayes) is of another advice and kills him during a gunfight making it look like enemy fire. On the “other side”, Walker is enlisted in the R.I.P.D., a special police department composed of the best law defenders of all times and places. Partnered with the odd and tactless cowboy Marshall Roysephus “Roy” Pulsipher, Nick tries to save the world from the damned on the run called “Deados”, to take a little bit of revenge on his partner, and to make his beloved wife Julia acknowledge he’s still with her.

 

 

The main problem with R.I.P.D. is the incredible affinity to Berry Levinson’s Men in Black: take the aliens out of the equation, put the undead in their place, and you’ll have an almost exact copy of MIB. In Will Smith’s place, acting as the inexperienced recruit who still has to get used to a strange, new world, there’s Ryan Reynolds, in his fourth comic book movie appearance after Blade: Trinity, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Green Lantern. At his side, instead of Tommy Lee Jones, we find Jeff Bridges as the grumpy, old-fashioned mentor, always ready to dispense wisdom to his partner and bullets to the bad guys. All the others are mere side dishes, from the villainous Kevin Bacon to the sadistic bureaucrat Mary-Louise Parker. Needless to say, the only actor capable of breaking the screen is Bridges, and even the protagonist Reynolds has the scene stolen from him more than once.

Everything else is normal administration: a global crisis, monsters with an unlikely anatomy, an emotional backstory for the protagonist, a hateful boss, impossibly big and noisy guns, action scenes ignoring the most basic principles of physics that are purely meant to entertain spectators. The cast acts well, the script goes on without slowing down a single moment, the direction is steady and capable. Schwentke shows his usual ability to mix up genres, this time uniting action comedy with some fantastic elements, also allowing himself a few puns towards the Western genre (even using Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks during one of the pivotal scenes). Surely, nothing’s missing for those of you in search of some raw entertainment.

However, despite craftily using all the elements that gave him the public’s favor, Schwentke fails to deliver a movie up to the expectations. The horror elements are merely hinted at, and even the comedy leaves more place than usual to the action. The blockbuster style is surely repetitive, but a little bit of originality, sometimes, can mark the difference between a very entertaining movie and a not-so-bad one. In the case of R.I.P.D., the similarities with the MIB series are far too many and far too accentuated to make the show truly enjoyable, and that’s a pity, because I think there was the opportunity to create a story capable of standing on its own.