The first time Robert De Niro and Al Pacino appeared in the same movie, it was "The Godfather, Part II." Maybe they should have quit while they were ahead.

Their second collaboration (and first to actually show them in the same scene), the 1995 crime drama "Heat," has its followers. But now they have teamed up again in "Righteous Kill," and it is never anything more than ordinary.

It's not as bad as the title, but it is nothing special. It is far from special.

At one time, De Niro and Pacino were the two finest actors on the planet, or at least in America, but that was 35 years ago. More often than not these days, Pacino overacts embarrassingly and De Niro plays a parody of his more storied roles.

As a matter of fact, the acting in "Righteous Kill" is perfectly fine. Both performers reel in their recent acting tendencies and once again appear natural on camera. The problem is, they are stuck in a story in which you can't see the forest for the clichés.

One character, a police psychiatrist, says, "I've never heard of a cop [who is a] serial killer."

Really? Hasn't he seen all those movies about vigilante policemen who kill guilty suspects who have escaped justice? Where has he been?

"Righteous Kill" is about a vigilante policeman who kills guilty suspects who have escaped justice. It isn't a surprise -- we know it from the start. That way, we have plenty of time to consider what it would be like if we didn't know it. If the story builds to a final revelation that the serial vigilante killer is a cop, it might be ever so slightly less predictable.

De Niro plays Turk, a New York homicide detective who opens the film confessing to 14 extra-curricular murders. His partner is Rooster, played by Pacino, and you have to think that at 65 and 68 the two actors are probably past their homicide detective days.

A couple of other detectives (John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg) begin to suspect that the serial killer might be a cop, and they think it might be Turk because, apparently, they don't like him. Then again, the entire force seems to consist of only five cops, the fifth being Carla Gugino as a crime scene investigator who is also Turk's girlfriend.

Like so many other movies with similar plots, most of which show up on late-night cable, the story does not extend much beyond that. There is a twist, which you can see marching up Broad Street, and the ending goes on far longer than it has any right to. But that's also pretty common these days.

Director Jon Avnet made the evocative drama "Fried Green Tomatoes" in 1991, but that, rather shockingly, is the last good thing he has done. In "Righteous Kill," he is to be commended for bringing Pacino and De Niro together again and reminding them what it means to act.

Avnet doesn't do anything wrong in the film. But the stuff he does right just isn't interesting enough.