‘Righteous Kill’ - Overdue pairing provides little heat

Good news! The new Robert De Niro/Al Pacino film doesn’t require audiences to hold their collective noses like Pacino’s recent debacle, “88 Minutes.”

Not much other good news to report on “Righteous Kill,” the first full-on teaming of the screen legends.

Hard to say why the duo chose such a disposable cop caper for their overdue co-starring vehicle.

It’s less deep than your average “Law & Order” episode, and “Kill’s” clumsy twist feels like watching a magician with an Ace of Spades dangling from his sleeve.

“Kill” kicks off with a blast of testosterone - heavy rock music underscores our leads pumping lead into shooting targets and pumping iron in an old-school gym.

OK, we get it. The boys aren’t ready for retirement just yet. Now start the story.

A serial killer with a penchant for poetry is rubbing out the Big Apple’s more notorious scum. It’s up to detectives Turk (De Niro) and Rooster (Pacino) to figure out who’s to blame.

Yes, their names are Turk and Rooster.

The veteran cops don’t do a ton of actual police work. They’re too busy making lame “Brady Bunch” jokes and teasing fellow cop Carla Gugino, who ’s dating Turk and has an affinity for rough sex. The pair undergo psychological counseling after one sting operation disintegrates, but the sequences exist primarily to let the officers riff on just how silly the whole process is.

Mid-film, someone suggests, “it’s gotta be a cop” responsible for the killings, and the entire investigation shifts gears. No rhyme, little reason. And since the cast is relatively small, the whodunnit is seriously exposed.

The film legends treat “Kill” like a vanity project, or at least a way to deny Father Time. A brief sex scene between De Niro and Gugino would be superfluous, if not for the suspicion the filmmakers want us to know the aging lion can still roar.

Director Jon Avnet, the man responsible for “88 Minutes,“ falls back on his gimmicky screen tics like needless slow motion shots and jittery cuts. But mostly he zooms too close into our aging stars faces, although it’s hard to blame him. Those mugs are the film’s best assets.

It’s sad to see two actors indelibly linked to New York in a film where the Big Apple plays such a miniscule part. No eccentric New York types, no atmospheric shots of the city in all its fractured glory. It’s as if this story could have been told in any city across the U.S.

What a waste.

The same can be said of “Righteous Kill,” a perfunctory thriller which squanders the chance to see two acting icons heat up the screen at the same time.

(Photo: Robert De Niro and Al Pacino appear together on screen for the first time since 1995’s “Heat” in the new cop thriller “Righteous Kill.”)

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