R.I.P.D.

Men In Black is now one of the biggest sci fi classics of the 90´s. The idea of an secret organization chasing down aliens, was a great idea. Critics and the audience loved the combination of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, trying to save the world. The sequel was not that good, i remember feeling dissapointed. Thankfully i found that Men In Black 3 was a step in the right direction. Right after Men In Black 3 came out, i suddenly heard about R.I.P.D. It seemed like a different version of Men In Black with the same concept. Not sure what to think, i watched the trailer and felt, i might check this out. Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges with big guns ? That can´t go wrong, or could it ? Is R.I.P.D. a fun combination of sci fi action for the geek audience, or did this concept run out of ideas ?

Detective sergeant Nick Walker ( Ryan Reynolds ), and detective lieutenant Bobby Hayes ( Kevin Bacon ) steal some gold they found during a drug-bust. Nick plan to use this gold, to make his life better with his wife Julia Walker ( Stephanie Szostak ). Suddenly Nick regret that he took the gold and tell Bobby that he plans to return it to where it belongs. At a raid on a warehouse, Bobby shoot Nick, to stop him from returning the gold. Nick wakes up, at the warehouse, but everything looks different. He suddenly gets sucked up into the sky, and is transfered to The R.I.P.D. Department ( The Rest In Piece Department ). Nick is informed about the agency, where they recruit dead police officers, to patrol the afterlife to catch " Deados " ( spirits that failed to cross over, and stayed on Earth as monsters ). Nick is assigned to a partner, Roy Pulsipher ( Jeff Bridges ), who needs to learn Nick how Everything works as they go out on a new assignement. On Earth, every R.I.P.D. officier are assigned avatars, transformed to fit into the ordinary world. Nick is a chinese guy man, named Jerry Chen, and Roy is a russian woman, Opal Pavlenko. On every mission, catching suspect monsters, Nick is determined to revenge on Bobby for killing him.

There are some parts where i found myself laughing, for a short moment. And some action scenes look ok, but overall R.I.P.D. is not as good as Men In Black. The CGI effects are terrible in some scenes, when you see the strange looking humans turning into monsters. Sad to say Jeff Bridges does not do very good here either, he is not awful, but he is far away from his acting quality in Crazy Heart ( this one you have to see ). Ryan Reynolds looks pretty much the same he always does, but his character is not very interesting. I really liked his performance in Buried, here he seems kind of lost. R.I.P.D. is one of the biggest box office bombs of 2013, taking in only 78 million, and the production budget was 130 million dollars. Everything is not terrible, some of the action scenes deliver some entertainment, but not enough to hide all the other problems. R.I.P.D. had potential, but director Robert Schwenke must have missed all the details that are needed to make this work.

Rating: DD