Adam Peters (31%) A hugely by the numbers action thriller that I can only imagine the sheer number of people who walked out of a cinema after the final scene (or more likely after the first twenty or so minutes) and never giving it a so much as a seconds worth of thought ever again. Big name star (in America at least) Tyler Perry is decent here as he's clearly trying his best with the lame material he has been given, while bad guy Matthew Fox is much better that the one-note character he's been lumbered with. The biggest problem by a mile though is the fact that this isn't interesting enough to make it as a proper thriller, while the action is on the whole is too badly shot utilising the annoying shaky-cam technique to full fullest which just ruins all possible enjoyment. This isn't a terrible watch, but there's so little reason to actually do so.

brchthethird Tyler Perry and, to a similar degree, Matthew Fox do the best they can with a mediocre film which suffers from poor writing and direction. The drama and suspense is greatly lacking, and the action is poorly shot in the currently vogue shaky-cam style. The worst instance of this is in the climactic scene, which should have been how the movie ended. This brings me to another fault I have with the movie: the second ending, where Jean Reno's character gets his comeuppance. The scene was completely unnecessary and didn't make too much sense, especially with the way it ties things up a little too conveniently. Honestly, his character didn't even need to be in the movie. Doesn't really deserve a rental or VOD, but it's fairly good for one, mindless viewing.

kapelusznik18 ****SPOILERS**** Off the wall police drama involving super-cop and brainy Alex Cross, Tyler Perry, a Detroit policemen as well as part time psychoanalyst. Cross gets himself involved with this high priced just released from a mental institution assassin known as the "Butcher of Slygo", Matthew Fox, who's out to destroy the cities's, that's on the verge of bankruptcy, top political financier German industrialist Giles Mercier, Jean Reno, so it can be taken over, in what were made to believe , a group of Wall Street vulture capitalists. Cross himself was looking to exit Detroit and get a job with the FBI as a criminal profiler that paid 35% more then as a Detroit cop as well provided him and his family with full dental care which was all the motivation he needed. But it was his gabby old lady, wife, Maria, Carmen Ejogo, who wanted no part of it. Which made Cross have second thoughts putting her in front of him getting ahead in the world of law enforcement.It was a lucky stroke for Cross when the "Butcher" knocked off Maria at a local restaurant, when he distracted Cross on the phone, that the by know mad as hell cop decided to stay in Detroit, like his old lady wanted him too, and take care of business in giving the "Butcher" everything that he had coming to him. This had Cross and his team of crime fighters Thomas Kane, Edward Burns, and Jody Klebanoff, Bonnie Bentley, get on the "Butcher's" tail who in fact was anything but the freelance psycho killer that Cross thought that he was.****SPOILERS**** It's later on that we realize whom the "Butcher" was working for that involved a sick financial scam thought up by his greedy employer to save what little in money he still had left after the disastrous stock market crash on 2008! As well as keep him from going to jail for both stock fraud and insider trading that in fact, by backfiring on him, almost wipe him out. This ridicules plan also was soon to soon backfired when Cross and his partners Kane & Kelbanoff planted two kilos of cocaine on him at his hideout in far off Indonesia. That sudden turn of events had him busted by the local police and sentenced to death, by firing squad, by the state court!

coltens14 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.