James Patterson’s Alex Cross has to be one of the best characters developed in pop-fiction.  Cross is a Washington D. C. native and detective.  In Patterson’s novel Cross, Alex investigates the murder of one of his family members.  The book is filled with suspense, a super-bad guy, and unbelievable violence. Ingredients needed to make an action-packed detective film.

Director Rob Cohen hopes to do just that with the new film Alex Cross (set to release October 2012), based on the above mentioned novel. Tyler Perry plays Dr. Alex Cross and Matthew Fox plays the villain Picasso.  When I first heard that Tyler Perry was gong to play Dr. Cross, I wasn’t sure about it. Would the man who created Madea be able to fill the shoes left by Morgan Freeman? Freeman brought Alex Cross to the big screen in Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider. Though Freeman was good in the role, he was too old to be Cross, who has growing children in the books. A change-up is good, but Perry?

The trailer (see below) has convinced me that it may not be a bad thing. Perry is convincing as Cross. Though Perry would not be the first name that comes to mind when you think action/suspense, he pulls it off, at least from what we can see in the trailer. In addition, Matthew Fox appears to pull off the psychotic villain, the kind that make James Patterson’s novels so good.

In short, based on the trailer, it looks like we might actually have a decent Alex Cross film in Alex Cross.