While near-contemporaries like Warren Beatty and Paul Newman have slowed down to deliver a film every few years, Robert De Niro is still an above-the-line star in two or three films a year. He may be called upon to glower at younger men like Cuba Gooding Jr ("Men of Honor") or Ben Stiller ("Meet the Parents") in his intimidating tyrant mode, but there's no question of him ever being upstaged by them. He has done the odd guest-star part ("Jackie Brown", "Cop Land") but is still a top dog in the junkyard.

But somehow that's not enough.

Admittedly, he had a big, likable hit in "Analyze This" in 1998 but what was he doing in "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle", a kids' film that was amazingly lucky not to go straight to video?

Along with embarrassments like "Fifteen Minutes" and "Flawless", "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" makes you look back over De Niro's recent career and ask what happened. For Scorsese, he made "Mean Streets", "Taxi Driver", "New York, New York", "The King of Comedy", and "Goodfellas" among others. He was in "The Godfather Part II", "Once Upon a Time in America", "The Deer Hunter", and "Midnight Run", all in the 70s and 80s. From the mid-80s, he has too often taken the lazy option - showy cameos in "Brazil", "The Untouchables", and "Angel Heart"; dreadful comic mugging in "We're No Angels", and one of the least fearsome screen monsters in "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein".

It's been nearly ten years since De Niro was better than good ("This Boy's Life", 1993) and going on 20 since he was great ("The King of Comedy", 1982). Surely De Niro can't just want to make 20 more movies like "Ronin" and "Rocky & Bullwinkle", or even "Meet the Parents"? He's good enough in most things to get by, and it's hard to believe that at 58 he hasn't got the chops any more. He hasn't had an especially colourful tabloid fodder private life, nor appeared in any career-shattering flops. He has enough control over his career to pick projects that will give him something to chew on. So why doesn't he get back to talkin' to us rather than the mirror?

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