Typecasting exists for a reason, and that reason is a damn good one. Some people simply fill certain roles so incredibly well that they should never be placed in any other role, ever. Seth Rogan is always funny because he’s great at being funny, and there’s no reason to have him do anything else. Jason Statham is great at beating the hell out of people, so he always plays characters that walk around beating the hell out of people. Just as Sean Bean is great at dying (and holds the record for most on-screen deaths), so he definitely has to die in anything he’s in. Tyler Perry has built an entire franchise of funny family movies, and he should never be allowed to be in an action movie under any circumstance.
Unfortunately, “Alex Cross” decided to go against the grain and cast Tyler Perry as Alex Cross, Detroit’s super-detective tasked with bringing down Picasso (Matthew Fox), a super-assassin with a psychotic obsession with pain. The good news is that Matthew Fox was absolutely incredible and boasted amazing on-screen presence. He actually saved the movie from being a complete waste of everyone’s time by making his character a genuine joy to watch. He seemed to be the only member of the cast who actually tried to make his character dynamic by adding a multitude of little ticks and mannerisms, which took the assassin from just weird to seriously disturbing.
Meanwhile, Tyler Perry seemed to stroll through the movie with a general lack of haste (at least for a detective) and kind of just guessed very obscure details of the assassin’s plan through apparently Sherlockian means, without the whole thing where Sherlock explains what brought him to the conclusion, so it ends up looking like Perry is just kind of guessing most of the time, and he happens to occasionally be right. The first half hour seems like a normal Tyler Perry movie, with him walking around his house and talking to his wife, children and his cranky old mother who lives with them and bosses everyone around, which is occasionally interrupted by Matthew Fox waking up the audience for whatever assassin-y thing he’s doing. Then the two storylines meet, and you get to sit back and admire the massive rift between Fox’s ability to play an action star and Perry’s.
Oddly enough, the producers actually made the typecasting mistake twice in “Alex Cross.” John C. McGinley, best known as Dr. Cox from “Scrubs,” plays the police chief, which basically meant he ran around yelling at Tyler Perry in his “Dr. Cox” voice. Eventually, the line between action movie and not-funny-but-supposed-to-be-funny cop movie gets kind of blurred until Fox comes back onto the screen to save “Alex Cross” from certain doom once again. Not that I’m a well-paid Hollywood director, but one would assume the audience isn’t supposed to be praying that the bad guy keeps killing people just so the main character won’t come back onto the screen.
If you can’t tell by now, “Alex Cross” wasn’t good. It had the potential to be a riveting box office hit with the right director, writer and cast. The story itself (which is based off of a book series by James Patterson) could have been very compelling, as the basic plot was pretty good. Poor writing, sub-par directing and shoddy acting severely limited the movie though, making “Alex Cross” yet another failed action/suspense movie in a season where the action movie is seriously struggling.
Overall, “Alex Cross” gets 4 Madeas out of 10, mostly because of Tyler Perry’s complete inability to act like a detective. Honorable mentions for the blame go to the director, Rob Cohen, and the writers, Marc Moss and Kerry Williamson. Mr. Perry, if for some reason you read this, please go make another family comedy, and don’t stray too far from your comfort zone, for everyone’s sake.
