Director: Robert Schwentke Writers: Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi Studios: Universal Pictures, Original Film, Relativity Media, Dark Horse Entertainment Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Bacon, Mary-Louise Parker, Stephanie Szostak Rating: TBC Release Date (UK): 20 September 2013 Runtime: 96 min
“R.I.P.D.” is a supernatural action-comedy in which Van Wilder and Rooster Cogburn run around town busting ghosts, but it’s much more stupid and much less fun than that concept sounds. Ryan Reynolds is Nick Walker, a Boston cop who’s killed during a drug bust and is sucked up Rapture-style to a heavenly light in the sky. There, he’s informed that he is to become a part of the Rest in Peace Department, a police force of the afterlife which recruits recently deceased men of the law to help capture and, if necessary, obliterate fugitive spirits known as Deados.
Nick is partnered with R.I.P.D. veteran Roy Pulsipher, a former U.S. Marshall from the Old West played with a rootin' tootin' southern drawl by Jeff Bridges. Together, they hunt down runaway ghouls hiding on Earth and soon uncover an evil plot to bring about the apocalypse: the legendary Staff of Jericho, a mystic device which has the power to bring the dead down to the world of the living, is being reassembled by a gang of Deados, and it's up to Nick and Roy to stop them. Essentially, this is “Men in Black” without the laughs, the heart or the golden Smith-Jones combo: instead we have Reynolds doing his usual wise-ass shtick while Bridges knowingly regurgitates his Oscar-nominated performance from “True Grit,” except in “True Grit” it was funnier.
Kevin Bacon plays the chief villain, Nick’s treacherous former partner who is coincidentally leading the search for the Staff, and phones it in just as much as he does in those bloody EE adverts. A running gag about Nick and Roy’s altered physical appearance on Earth — to avoid detection, Nick is perceived by the living as an elderly Chinese man while Roy is perceived as a smokin’ hot blonde bombshell — is stretched woefully thin by the halfway point, while another concerning Roy's corpse being skull-fucked by a pack of wolves is just plain embarrassing. R.I.P.D.? More like D.I.R.E..
Rating: 3/10
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