"Alex Cross" is an interesting exercise in back-engineering, a prequel that takes us back to the days before the psychologist-police profiler was the sage, solemn and inscrutable sleuth created for the screen by Morgan Freeman over a decade ago.

This Cross is cocky, a bit trigger-happy and prone to revenge -- and this Cross is played by Tyler Perry.

He's also less interesting. When you fill in a character's back story, you strip away some of his mystique. When you focus on the flippant in a film about a frantic hunt for a psychopathic assassin, you diminish the urgency of the hunt and remove the gravitas of the character.

And when you make Tyler Perry run and point a gun, you remember why nobody's ever used him as an action figure before.
Alex Cross