Very well executed

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

What I gained from watching: Tyler Perry is no Morgan Freeman. Tyler Perry looks like a clown. Tyler Perry when frowning looks like a frowning clown. Tyler Perry when angry looks like Pennywise. Edward Burns totally steals all the scenes when he and TP are together. Jean Reno is now fat but still kinda sexy, in a French Ray Winstone kinda way. Nana Mama really needs to be recast. Tyler Perry does not look like a young Muhammed Ali. It doesn't matter if you change a characters skin colour just as long as it fits with the mixed up version of the book. All in all I give it 4 out of 10 eggs.....

"Tyler Perry" ....really ?? Were the producers possibly on a drunken-binge for days or off-their-medication when they made this fatal error of choosing the "main" character ?? And this isn't even mentioning the writing, directing, and other characters. But choosing such an unworthy and a "bad choice' for the title role of the character that the movie is named after....is catastrophic !My choice would have been...."Idris Elba", then get better writers and a better director and "Cross" fans would have been a lot happier. ( and the movie would've also made a lot more money for these obviously incompetent producers).

So Bad it's good rating: 3,5/5 "Alex Cross" is a by-the-book detective thriller that's kind of enjoyable to watch, but isn't particularly good. Dr. Alex Cross (Tyler Perry) is a psychologist and police lieutenant who's one top of the world. His long time best friend Tommy Kane (Edward Burns) is his partner on the police squad, he's got a beautiful, loving wife, two daughters, another baby on the way and his sassy mother (or is it grandmother?) lives with him in a huge house. He's so good at his job he can tell you what your favorite colour is based on the type of ice cream you ordered. That's when our villain for the movie comes in. Matthew Fox plays a devious serial murderer nicknamed "The Picasso Killer". He uses a drug that paralyzes people's bodies (but not their eyes or their mouths) yet enables them to feel pain. He tortures them to get information, then kills them for fun and, feeling inspired, creates a charcoal drawing afterward for the police to keep. Apparently, this guy's been hired, or has some kind of super elaborate agenda because he is going after high-ranking employees of CEO Giles Mercier's company (Mercier is played by Jean Reno). When Cross gets in the way, Picasso decides to take the fight to a whole new, personal level...I'm not going to say that this movie's great. I wouldn't even say it's good, but it is entertaining. The entertainment value is mostly due to the game of cat-and-mouse between Alex Cross and Picasso. I give credit to the movie for actually making two characters that feel like they are evenly matched. Alex Cross might be a super detective, but Picasso, he's a super assassin with Batman-level gadgets and insane skills. You will not believe to what lengths this guy goes to get his prey and you will wonder how many people will bite the dust before Cross manages to take him down. I also enjoyed Matthew Fox's totally outlandish performance as the killer. It's a nice balance to Tyler Perry's totally wooden and bland performance. Kind of like a steak that's totally burnt on the outside and raw on the inside, but tasty around the edges where the two extremes meet. The film is that right mix of flat-out ridiculous, predictable and bad elements combined with enough actually intriguing developments to make the whole thing watchable. Well, as long as it's with a bunch of friends who will make it that much more fun by laughing at it.When it comes to the bad elements, there's no shortage in "Alex Cross". Here are some more memorable examples. Characters that appear to be crucial to the plot are suddenly dropped from the story entirely. What, I ask you, happened to Rachel Nichols' character? I don't mean the obvious. I mean: can someone tell me why there's a big moment with her, and then we never see her again? Characters are either ridiculously skilled, or so dumb they would struggle to survive on a daily basis. When it becomes obvious that the Picasso killer is inside a building, looking to kill his next target Tommy hears an explosion and runs out of the room, leaving the intended target alone for the killer to pick off. What a dummy! This is also a movie where characters just know things because as long as they're off-screen they don't actually exist within the movie. While on the side, they're sitting in a comfortably while reading the script and taking notes. Take the Picasso killer. He's just encountered the police for the first time, unexpectedly. Somehow though, he just happens to have a newspaper clipping showing Alex Cross, his partner and the other officer that confronted him tacked on his wall. How did he figure out who was going to come after him? Afterwards, how does he figure out where these people live? The only explanation can be that he read the script and it told him where to go.Another great example: Cross is talking to a high-ranking criminal in a car so that they can be "alone". He's bribing the criminal in order to get some much needed information to catch Picasso. The bribe in question is a piece of evidence that would otherwise incriminate the guy if the case was ever revived. The bad guy comments that on top of the pistol that Alex is offering him, there was another one in the evidence locker. At that very moment, Tommy shines the laser scope on the mobster's forehead, shutting him up and making him agree to cooperate. Understand that Tommy is at least 10 meters away and there was no way he could have heard the conversation. How did he know the exact moment to shine the light on the guy's forehead? For that matter, why didn't the body guards catch the guy pulling out the gun and pointing it towards their boss? "Alex Cross" is a film that's badly put together and not particularly inventive either. The editing is simply awful when it comes to the action sequences, the characters' actions often don't make any sense and the story is utter madness more than once. Let's not forget the performances from the leads, which are so outlandish I recommend you watch the film just to see them. Tyler Perry is 100% uncharismatic and about as emotive as the Easter Island statues. Matthew Fox, he's playing an all-out lunatic, so over-the-top he's straight from a cartoon. The film is never really painful to watch, but the director really let these actors down. It boils down to a complete mess that's so bad, it becomes good again. (On DVD, August 1, 2014)

By the time this film was available on DVD in early 2013, two more books - Merry Christmas, Alex Cross & Alex Cross, Run - will have been released, The films have not been nearly as steady, only getting its third cinematic treatment and the first since 2001's Along Came a Spider. Patterson's busily stalked protagonist did fairly well at the box office if not inspiring critics into believing he was worth following for another eighteen adventures. Fans of Patterson's airport fiction might disagree despite whatever objections they had between the films and the varying text. New fans are being sought out for the franchise reboot though and they should be mostly pleased. Considering they are used to ham-handed acting, amateurish fimmaking, cartoonish villains, hypocritical motivations and a touch of old broad sass, they should be right at home watching Tyler Perry take the lead.As the new era begins, Alex Cross is once again chasing down another psychopath and saving a battered white girl. Along with his select team, childhood friend Tommy Kane and Monica Ashe - Who are secretly hooking up behind the boss' back - they investigate crimes of some unspecified nature in the greater Detroit area. Their special unit is hardly defined by anything other than Alec being such a master of deduction that he can tell his wife had coffee based on the blouse stain big enough to be spotted by a Fisher Price telescope from Pluto. Other than dealing with the occasional crime scene, life is good for "Detective Doctor" Alex Cross who is on the short list for an FBI job in Washington and he has just been told there's another little Cross on the way.Also on the way is another psycho. This one, played by Matthew Fox, is a professional assassin who calls himself "The Butcher" but is referred to as "Picasso" by Tommy based on him leaving a drawing at at recent upscale massacre. There is a mystery benefactor behind The Butcher's recent spree which includes getting into underground MMA fights, paralyzing women with a special drug, and concocting elaborate break-ins to take out a French financial specialist. When Cross and Co. disrupt the latter, The Butcher takes to being bullet-grazed worse that being punched in the face.There is a momentary fascination with the film in figuring out precisely what Fox's psychotic villain is really up to. How does buying one's way into a brutal fight connect to a stolen laptop, what's on it and how it leads to international finance? Just who is Jean Reno's one-scene millionaire is not only superfluous suspect available to be funding The Butcher? Do professional mercenaries go off-script so often to take on personal vendettas after getting a little boo-boo from their adversary For ever answer revealed in Alex Cross - and few are really offered - it opens up ten different logical conundrums over just how brilliant the particular cat and mouse really are. Loosely based on Patterson's prequel novel Cross, the screenplay by first-timer Kerry Williamson and Marc Moss - whose only previous credit is the adaptation of Patterson's Along Came a Spider - actually gets less complicated and more boring as things get pieced together. What begins as a ludicrous police procedural becomes an even more ludicrous revenge thriller that asks viewers to believe this morally-principled Sherlock-wannabe is not just ready to turn into The Punisher but also possesses the superskills necessary for an over-weight, out-of-shape, dopey, doughy detective to take on a cage fighter who overreacts to taking a single punch. There has not been a less convincing avenging angel that Tyler Perry's Alex Cross since Thomas Jane portrayed the comic world's Frank Castle by interrogating a suspect with a melting popsicle.The stakes in Alex Cross are raised even further with the kind of vengeful horror that most professional assassins would admit is against the code. Both of the Taken films pushed the boundaries of the ratings system but did so under a kind of unwritten guide that throat-punching is less graphic than the more macho-violent fare that Sylvester Stallone has done in his Rambo and Expendable films. Alex Cross will never be confused with those, but its violence is shocking for an MPAA-rated "PG-13" mystery thriller. The connection between sexual fetish and murder is pushed during a torture scene. No less that two other crimes are committed towards women with one worthy of a funeral and the other nothing more than a cell phone snapshot. Patterson's specialty of bruising-up the fairer sex received an "R" rating when Kiss the Girls came out. Fifteen years later, viewers are apparently so numb that it can be extrapolated even while being dumbed down for those used to Perry's cartoonish portrayals of man-on-woman crimes.All such shocking moments of Alex Cross could be all part of some calculated plan for Perry to prove that he is going hard in trying to prove what a serious, demonstrative actor he can be. Most would recommend a stint in acting classes for starters which co-star Matthew Fox is more than happy to teach. First lesson: Act with the eyes. Bug them out as far as possible to prove the depth of the character's villainy. The originally cast Idris Elba as Cross would have had to take the class on keeping a straight face in the middle of this nonsense. Lesson two goes to director Rob Cohen. With no competency as an action director and stars was wooden as Perry and Burns, shake the camera as much as humanly possible to justify urgency. James Cameron could not make a call to OnStar more dramatically riveting. Mainly because he would never create and action sequence around a call to OnStar. Alex Cross is equally silly, boring, offensive and implausible which are also its best qualities if the viewer is in a mocking kind of mood.