Review: Alex Cross

It was time to catch up on the 'worst-of-the-year' list, and Alex Cross was available for me to watch.  I'd never seen a Tyler Perry movie, nor a movie based on James Patterson's character Alex Cross (apparently there are two other films previously released with Morgan Freeman in the lead role).  It was on multiple 'worst-of-the-year' lists, so I thought it time to take my medicine and watch it.

SYNOPSIS
Alex Cross is an African-American version of Sherlock Holmes: he can take in ridiculous amounts of details, making him a brilliant detective.  Eventually he comes up against a sociopath assassin whom he profiles wrong, with lethal results.

THE GOOD
Matthew Fox as the bad guy here was pretty good.  He lost A LOT of weight to do the role, and I think that successfully distracted me from think of the countless hours I viewed him as Jack on Lost.

The action scenes were pretty good, although nothing to write home about.

THE BAD
Tyler freaking Perry is the worst part of this film.  Whoever decided that he should play the lead role should be run out of town.  He just cannot act!  The scenes where we were supposed to believe that he is a Sherlock-type character, all I did was see a man who was reading lines.  His 'heart-wrenching' scenes felt exactly the same.  He has almost no variance in his emotions.  But, I can't be too harsh because he makes a lot more money than I do.

Alex Cross's partner was actually worse.  It felt like he was taken from a bad TV pilot that never got the green light.

CONCLUSION
I really feel like if they would've put even a little more effort into this movie, it could have been way better.  As it stands, it is quite awful.  It just shows that book-to-movie translation is extremely difficult and should only be done if it has blockbuster potential (i.e. Harry Potter, Twilight, etc.).  1/5 Stars.