Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, Mary-Louise Parker
Robert Schwentke
IIA
In January last year, actor Ryan Reynolds went on the record (in an interview on Indiewire's The Playlist blog) to say that he hoped the supernatural action comedy he had been working on would become a franchise, so that he could appear in the sequels.
But it doesn't look like that this CGI-laden US$130 million production will be spawning any sequels. In fact, some might say that German director Robert Schwentke's adaptation of Peter M. Lenkov's 1999 Rest in Peace Department comic is pretty much dead on arrival.
R.I.P.D. has the way-too-bland Reynolds playing Nick Walker, a Boston detective who is double-crossed and killed off early in the film by his partner and supposed best friend, Bobby Hayes (an underused Kevin Bacon).
Shortly before that, Nick and Bobby had bowed to temptation and taken some gold they had come across during their police work. Because of this crime, Nick discovers, he will not be allowed to rest in peace. Instead, the slain cop is asked by the first person he meets in the afterlife, Boston R.I.P.D. bureau chief Proctor (Mary-Louise Parker), to decide between paying a penance of 100 years of service in the otherworldly police department, or face the prospect of being sent to hell.
On learning that working in the R.I.P.D. allows him to return to the realm of the living (and thereby a chance to see his wife (Stephanie Szostak), Nick agrees to sign up for 100 years of dealing with "Deados", monstrous souls who refuse to move peacefully to the other side.