Robert De Niro Can’t Save ‘Red Lights’ [Video]

In Red Lights, Robert De Niro plays a blind psychic who is suspected of murder. Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy play skeptical scientists who aren’t sure how to react to the supernatural events that occur around De Niro’s character, Simon Silver. It’s a psychological thriller with great actors, unfortunately, it fails to deliver.

Stephen Whitty of the Newark Star-Ledger writes: “How did a cast like this sign on for a movie like this?”

Red Lights currently has a 33% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience rating doesn’t sit much better at 44%.

The biggest complaints seem to be that the movie is “incoherent,” the ending is “non-nonsensical” and that even the great Robert De Niro couldn’t pull off some of the campy lines of dialogue.

Of course, the failure of Red Lights doesn’t lay squarely on the shoulders of De Niro. His character Simon Silver is the driving force behind the movie but Silver is not the main character.

Graham Young at the Birmingham Post writes:

“Leaving too much of an increasingly contrived film in Murphy’s hands when he’s not a leading man ensures that neither Weaver’s nor De Diro’s even more fitful presence is sufficient to save the day.”

The majority of critics weren’t impressed with Red Lights but some found it thrilling. Jeremy Kay at the Guardian writes that “the performances are uniformly solid and (director Rodrigo) Cortés is skilled at drawing out tension,” before adding, “however in the end, the finale is grandiose and tedious.

Have you seen Red Lights? What did you think of the new Robert De Niro movie?

Here’s a trailer for the psychological thriller.