Tyler Perry is known best for a character called Madea, which he performs in drag. He made quite a few films starring this character, and are not received that positively. I myself have not seen any of them, so I wasn't handicapped when watching him take on the character made famous by Morgan Freeman.
Naturally, these are hard shoes to fill, perhaps even impossible. Which is circumvented by rebooting the story lines and starting with a younger Alex Cross. To a degree, this works. But is undermined by some events that let the character do things that are a little hard to swallow. Not having read the books, I can't say if his character was written like that. In the film, however, with the little info we are given about him, it is unacceptable. This is hardly Tyler's fault. He, in fact, was not bad at all. Especially in the dramatic scenes, he showed he was more than capable. In the policing scenes, he was adequate enough, but the script never really allows him to show why Alex Cross is brilliant. Matthew Fox, you will hardly recognize him as the villain Picasso. He lost some serious weight and was almost terrifying. But also, he could not hide the fact that the script was a mess. Honestly, if the motivation was to bring the character from Kiss the Girls back on the map, then it has failed miserably. Alex Cross is more of an action movie than a thriller. And somehow that feels wrong.
To be fair, though, Alex Cross is entertaining enough and nearly not as bad as reviewers make it out to be. One to watch on a rainy Sunday.
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