GRETA (US/South Korea/China/Ireland - 2019) Directed by Neil Jordan. Written by Ray Wright and Neil Jordan. Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Chloe Grace Moretz, Maika Monroe, Stephen Rea, Colm Feore, Zawe Ashton, Jeff Hiller, Jessica Preddy, Thaddeus Daniels. (R, 98 mins) Best known for 1986's MONA LISA, 1992's THE CRYING GAME, and 1994's INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan has all the cache that comes with being a respected, Oscar-nominated director, but his career as a whole has been pretty hit-or-miss. Sure, he's also made fine films like 1996's MICHAEL COLLINS, 1997's THE BUTCHER BOY, 2002's THE GOOD THIEF, and 2010's little-seen ONDINE, and he created the acclaimed 2011-2013 Showtime series THE BORGIAS, but he's also got plenty of clunkers taking up space on his IMDb page, among them 1988's HIGH SPIRITS, one of the worst comedies of its decade, 1989's WE'RE NO ANGELS, a justifiably forgotten exercise in shameless mugging for Robert De Niro and Sean Penn, 1999's IN DREAMS, and 2007's embarrassingly bad Jodie Foster vigilante thriller THE BRAVE ONE. The box office success of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE aside, Jordan typically doesn't fare well when he's in genre journeyman mode. With that in mind, one might approach GRETA, his first big-screen effort since his intermittently interesting 2013 vampire film BYZANTIUM, with some trepidation. A throwback to the sort of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE-esque, "(blank)-from-Hell" psycho-thrillers that were epidemic in the 1990s, GRETA is fun in a check-your-brain-at-the-door kind of way. To its credit, it isn't delusional enough to take itself too seriously, but at the same time, it can't just do some of the stupid shit it does and let Jordan off the hook just because he's a respected filmmaker slumming in a lurid B thriller that's significantly gussied-up by an overqualified star.
Frances McCullen (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a quiet old soul from Boston living in NYC with her bratty, spoiled friend Erica (Maika Monroe of IT FOLLOWS) in a spacious Tribeca loft given to Erica as a graduation gift by her wealthy father. A recent Smith College graduate working as a server in an upscale restaurant, Frances keeps her distance from her workaholic dad back home (Colm Feore) and is still processing her grief following her mom's death from cancer a year earlier. After work one evening, Frances spots an abandoned handbag on the subway and takes it home. Refusing to indulge Erica's suggestion that they keep the wad of cash that's inside and toss the bag, Frances checks an ID in the purse and the next morning, does the right thing and returns it to its owner in Brooklyn. That owner is Greta Hadig (Isabelle Huppert), a retired piano teacher. She's grateful for Frances' act of kindness, invites her in for coffee, and the pair quickly form a surrogate mother-daughter relationship when Frances, still missing her beloved mother, learns that Greta is a lonely widow whose estranged daughter is at a music conservatory in Greta's native France. Ditching a night of clubbing with an incredulous and seemingly insensitive Erica to have a quiet dinner with Greta, things come to a screeching halt when Greta has Frances grab some candles in the other room and she opens the wrong cabinet, finding over a dozen identical handbags with Post-It notes with the names of who found them, including one that reads "Frances McCullen."
Quickly realizing it's a sick scam and understandably creeped out, Frances feigns a sudden illness and leaves, immediately deciding that Greta is bad news. But Greta wants a friend and won't be ignored. She texts Frances hundreds of times, leaves a ton of messages on their home phone (call it nitpicking, but nothing says "directed and co-written by a 69-year-old" like a Tribeca twenty-something with a landline), and starts showing up at Frances' job, both inside and standing outside, motionless, intimidatingly staring at the restaurant for the entire duration of Frances' shift. She shows up outside the apartment, then texts Frances a series of pics that show she's following Erica and intending to harm her. Frances also discovers some secrets about Greta's family, starting with the fact that she's Hungarian and pretending to be French (which doesn't really have any bearing on anything). Of course, there isn't enough evidence for the cops to do anything, though Greta eventually causes a scene at the restaurant and gets arrested. She's promptly released, and the pair reach a tentative truce until Greta goes further off the deep end, hellbent on ensuring she has Frances all to herself.
The kind of film that probably would've been the #1 movie in America for three weeks if this was March of 1999 instead of 2019, GRETA is dumber than a box of rocks, but there's no denying that it's entertaining. Sure, one can complain about the rampant stupidity of the characters. Once Erica figures out Greta is stalking her and confronts her on a crowded bus, what does she then do? Of course, she gets off the bus packed to the gills with potential witnesses and heads straight down the nearest dark alley alone. And when a psycho is holding you captive in a hidden room in their house and you manage to briefly get the upper hand via an impromptu finger amputation-by-cookie cutter, where do you run? Where else? The dark, cobweb-filled basement with no exit! Moretz isn't really required to do much more than be distraught and frazzled, while Monroe doesn't have a whole lot to do but the arc of her character is probably the most legitimately unpredictable element (frequent Jordan star Stephen Rea also turns up in the third act as a private eye hired by Frances' father). But GRETA wouldn't be much without the heroic efforts of the great Huppert, the iconic French legend with a record 16 Cesar Award nominations over a career dating back to 1971, and who's no stranger to throwing herself into a character, as anyone who's seen Michael Haneke's THE PIANO TEACHER and her Oscar-nominated performance in Paul Verhoeven's ELLE can attest. Taking what's a spiritual successor to the kind of "horror hag" roles that gave a major second wind to the careers of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Olivia de Havilland and others in the 1960s when they began aging out of traditional leading lady gigs and running with it, Huppert is off the chain throughout GRETA. Initially coming off as vulnerable yet vaguely sinister (you know something's up when she's having coffee with Frances and they're interrupted by a pounding that she blames on "the neighbors"), Huppert goes from zero-to-batshit pretty quickly, refusing to take no for an answer ("Everybody needs a friend!"), poisoning an elderly dog, furiously spitting gum in Frances' hair, flipping tables over in a posh restaurant while ranting in Hungarian, and pirouetting around her house while she disposes of an unwanted intruder. It's a role that's mostly beneath someone of Huppert's esteemed caliber, but she doesn't treat it as such, knowing exactly what kind of movie she's in and classing it up simply by probably relishing the opportunity to go over-the-top as the villain in a commercial thriller. GRETA doesn't hold up under much scrutiny, but it moves briskly and has a game star carrying it on her shoulders. Who ever thought we'd get to see Isabelle Huppert headlining a wide release in 2019?
Guadagnino and his BIGGER SPLASH screenwriter David Kajganich (whose writing credits also include 2009's BLOOD CREEK, a little-seen horror film that deserved a bigger audience) fashion their SUSPIRIA with the very Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Lars von Trier-esque subtitle "Six Chapters and an Epilogue Set in a Divided Berlin." Specifically, 1977 West Berlin, with the omnipresent Berlin Wall and the city in turmoil with bombings and recurring invocations of Baader-Meinhof, the far-left militant Red Army Faction, and the October hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181 by the PFLP. In the midst of this is Markos Dance Academy student and Red Army supporter Patricia Hingle (Chloe Grace Moretz), who befriends elderly psychotherapist Dr. Josef Klemperer ("Lutz Ebersdorf"--more on him shortly) and frantically spells out the details of a wild story that the place is run by a coven of witches. When Patricia disappears--those close to her believe she went underground with a terrorist outfit--her spot at Markos becomes available and is given to Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson), who's also running away, fleeing a domineering, terminally ill mother and a repressive Mennonite upbringing in rural Ohio.
A rebellious outcast in both her congregation and her own family going back to her childhood--whether she was constantly daydreaming about dancing, obsessed with learning all she could about Berlin, or being caught masturbating in her closet--Susie feels destined for Markos, and more specifically, its renowned choreographer Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton), who soon takes the naive, sheltered American under her wing as her protegee for sinister reasons that have to do with more than dancing. Meanwhile, Dr. Klemperer (in the worst-kept secret of 2018, "Lutz Ebersdorf," initially described by the filmmakers as a practicing doctor and non-professional actor making his debut, is really Swinton under extensive prosthetics), haunted by the disappearance of his wife during the Holocaust 35 years earlier, is disturbed enough by Patricia's story and the notes scribbled in her left-behind journals that he begins his own investigation into her claims about the Markos Academy, one that dovetails with Markos dancer Sara (Mia Goth), who bonds with Susie but remains troubled by Patricia's vanishing.
That plot synopsis is really just scratching the surface of everything Guadagnino and Kajganich are up to here. SUSPIRIA '18 does a masterful job of capturing late '70s Berlin, with the gray, dreary atmosphere, the constant rain, the political tumult (bombs and commotion are frequently heard outside the walls of the Markos), the nods to Fassbinder and the casting of Volker Schlondorff regular Angela Winkler (THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM, THE TIN DRUM) as Miss Tanner, the right-hand to Madame Blanc. The film takes place in a Berlin that's literally divided by a wall, but also by politics and history, particularly the still-open wounds of WWII, as represented by the mournful Klemperer. That extends to the scheming and machinations going on in the academy, with the staff divided over whether to give control to Madame Blanc or the aging and unseen founder Helena Markos. The score by Radiohead's Thom Yorke is moodily effective--a complete contrast to the progasmic bombast of Goblin--but doesn't really signify "Berlin" in a musical sense.
Rest assured, Guadagnino doesn't forget that he's making an Italian horror film, whether it's numerous instances of stomach-turning gore, a truly nightmarish climax that goes completely off the rails, a Yorke piano cue that sounds directly lifted from Fabio Frizzi's score for Lucio Fulci's THE BEYOND, or a late-film cameo by Jessica Harper. There's also Argento-specific callbacks, from the friendship between Patricia and Klemperer reminiscent of Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasance in PHENOMENA, and Swinton's disguised second performance recalling Adrien Brody's ridiculous "Byron Deidra" act in the dreadful latter-day Argento dud GIALLO. In a physically demanding performance, Johnson is an effective Susie, whose character arc goes in a vastly different direction than Harper's did in Argento's film, allowing Goth's Sara to resonate more for the audience in a way that wasn't required of Stefania Casini, her predecessor in the role. The dance instructors who make up the coven are well-cast, particularly Winkler, Paul Verhoeven vet Renee Soutendijk, and Sylvie Testud, who's made up in way that looks like a tribute to Jane March's "Richie" in COLOR OF NIGHT. Swinton is a terrific Madame Blanc, whose mentoring of Susie echoes Klemperer's belief that "love and manipulation...they share houses very often." Guadagnino perhaps overindulges his friend and frequent star Swinton, who actually has a third role by the end of the film, coming perilously close to making this her own personal DR. STRANGELOVE (her work as Klemperer is a triumph of old-age prosthetic makeup that the Oscars should recognize, but she doesn't do enough with her voice to totally sell the "Lutz Ebersdorf" illusion). While an over-the-top, arthouse deep dive into late 1970s West German politics, history, sociology, and culture seems like a strange approach to remaking a legendary and beloved Italian horror film, it's too lofty in its ambitions and too unpredictably gonzo to simply dismiss, regardless of how much of a daunting horse pill it can be at times.
LOST SOUL: THE DOOMED JOURNEY OF RICHARD STANLEY'S ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (US - 2015)
On the heels of JODOROWSKY'S DUNE comes another LOST IN LA MANCHA-style documentary about a film that never was, Richard Stanley's THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. Stanley, the eccentric visionary behind the cult classics HARDWARE (1990) and DUST DEVIL (1992), had a lifelong fascination with the H.G. Wells novel about an island of man-beasts created by the mad Dr. Moreau that had already been filmed as ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932) and THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1977), and got the greenlight from New Line Cinema as his MOREAU entered pre-production in 1994. Of course, the film was ultimately released in 1996, directed not by Stanley, who was fired less than a week into shooting, but by veteran journeyman John Frankenheimer, bombed with critics and audiences, and is universally considered one of cinema's all-time great camp classics. LOST SOUL isn't a particularly cinematic documentary in the hands of director David Gregory, the head of cult Blu-ray/DVD outfit Severin Films and an old hand in the world of DVD extras--LOST SOUL often feels less like a movie and more like a long bonus feature on a deluxe Blu-ray edition of MOREAU. While Gregory drops the ball in some areas--it's understandable that co-star David Thewlis probably didn't want to be interviewed, but his name never even comes up when he actually has the film's main role--the stories told are fascinating. Fairuza Balk and Marco Hofschneider are the only two stars who take part, though you also get Rob Morrow, who quit a few days into production and was replaced by Thewlis. Stanley envisioned DAS BOOT's Jurgen Prochnow as Dr. Moreau but when New Line executive Michael DeLuca got involved, the role suddenly went to Marlon Brando, which turned the modestly-budgeted $8 million film into something more expensive. Bruce Willis agreed to play the central character, Edward Douglas, a shipwreck victim trapped on Moreau's island of horrors, and James Woods signed on to play Montgomery, Moreau's psychotic assistant. Even in pre-production, chaos reigned: execs started demanding changes to the script. Brando almost dropped out when his daughter Cheyenne committed suicide, and when he finally committed, he wanted Roman Polanski brought in to direct. Then Willis bailed upon his split from Demi Moore, saying it wasn't a good time to head off to Australia for several months. Stanley went along with some uncredited script revisions by Walon Green (THE WILD BUNCH), had a meeting with Brando and managed to win him over, but cites his biggest strategic error as "meeting Val Kilmer."
Ousted MOREAU director Richard Stanley
The first half of LOST SOUL deals with Stanley and his vision, but Gregory knows you're watching for the much-talked-about Kilmer horror stories (the late Frankenheimer once said of Kilmer: "Will Rogers never met Val Kilmer") that begin with him burning a crew member's sideburns with a lit cigarette and escalate from there. Kilmer's behavior on the set of MOREAU has become the stuff of legend, and several lament that with him onboard and red-hot after BATMAN FOREVER, using his newfound A-list clout to upstage, second-guess, and overrule Stanley, the project was no longer about Stanley's serious, thoughtful $8 million Wells adaptation but rather, a $40 million commercial horror movie with Marlon Brando and blockbuster expectations thanks to the presence of Kilmer. Just before filming began, Kilmer announced that he was too busy to play Douglas and demanded 40% less shooting time while keeping his salary. He decided that he wanted to play Montgomery instead of Douglas (the Morrow role that ultimately went to Thewlis), which bounced Woods from the production. He then proceeded to slow down shooting by questioning every one of Stanley's directorial decisions and grill him about his editing choices ("Tell me how you're gonna do this, Richard," and "That's not gonna cut together...that won't work"). Hofschneider, who does a perfect Kilmer impression and obviously has no love for the actor, states that Kilmer's treatment of Stanley "wasn't about the shoot anymore. This was a power game."
Things were so bad less than a week into filming that Morrow called New Line head Robert Shaye personally and begged to be let out of his contract ("There's just a bad vibe...I just want to go home"), and when a hurricane struck the Cairns location on the Australian coast and caused a several-week production delay, New Line took the opportunity to make a change, firing Stanley and bringing in Frankenheimer, who only took the job to work with Brando. Frankenheimer barely managed to complete the film with both Brando's insane ideas (like playing one scene with an ice bucket on his head) and Kilmer being abrasive and uncooperative (Frankenheimer was once quoted as saying "If I was making THE LIFE OF VAL KILMER, I wouldn't cast Val Kilmer"). Stan Winston makeup assistant Paul Katte remarks that "Marlon showed his legendary contempt for what he did for a living, but he was at least nice and respectful of other people. Val Kilmer just acted like a classic prep school bully." Morbid curiosity about what was going on got the better of him, and Stanley (who still retained a co-writing credit on the released version of MOREAU) would eventually be snuck back on the set by a pair of rebellious production drivers, hiding under a dog mask--he's actually visible in some fleeting shots and production personnel heard rumors of Stanley returning to sabotage the shoot, one even noting in hindsight that "there was always one extra who wouldn't take his mask off during lunch." Stanley's done some documentaries and some short films, and co-wrote Nacho Cerda's THE ABANDONED (2006), but thus far, he has yet to make another feature film. With two mishandled masterpieces to his credit as the cult of HARDWARE and DUST DEVIL grew, Stanley is revered among genre fans as a bold visionary stifled by suits and in way over his head with the big money expectations of New Line Cinema, with Balk, Hofschneider, Morrow, and producer Edward R. Pressman speaking very highly of him. One wishes Gregory could've dug a little further (Kilmer is unsurprisingly absent, as are Thewlis, Ron Perlman, Temuera Morrison, and Mark Dacascos among the film's surviving stars), and while the extras and the production assistants are willing to talk about what they observed, Gregory seems a little too easily detoured by their reminiscing about the drugs, sex, and goofing off during all the down time. Still, LOST SOUL serves as a fascinating document of a tumultuous clusterfuck of a production, riddled with big egos, rotten behavior, and just plain bad luck combining to derail the career of a promising filmmaker who was perhaps too much of an oddball to be playing the Hollywood game anyway (Stanley credits his friend, a "warlock chappy" named Skip, with casting a spell to help him win over Brando). Still, there's no denying that footage of late Mini-Me inspiration Nelson de la Rosa tearing up the dance floor at a Cairns nightclub is absolutely priceless. (Unrated, 98 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant) CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (France/Germany/Switzerland - 2014; US release 2015)
The latest film from French auteur Olivier Assayas (BOARDING GATE, CARLOS) is one of those smug "industry insider" pieces about movies and acting that critics usually trip over themselves to laud with praise and adulation. Yes, Assayas takes some cheap shots at the vapidity of Hollywood, but like his script, it's labored, heavy-handed, and obvious. Veteran European actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) wants to get back to her serious roots after selling out to Hollywood blockbusters for several years. After walking away from her recurring role in the X-MEN franchise, she heads to Europe with her personal assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart) to speak at a ceremony honoring her mentor, a playwright from whom she got her first break two decades earlier. The playwright dies before the ceremony, and his widow (former Fassbinder regular Angela Winkler) and a stage director (Lars Eidinger) offer Maria a role in a new version of the play: The Maloja Snake, about the DEVIL WEARS PRADA relationship between middle-aged executive Helena and her young, naive assistant Sigrid. Maria became a star playing Sigrid 20 years ago, but now she's aged into the Helena role, with Sigrid to be played by American actress Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloe Grace Moretz), a talented but self-destructive, Lindsay Lohan-like trainwreck who's constant fodder for tabloids and paparazzi, and has even broken up the marriage of a famous writer (shades of Stewart's fling with her married SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN director?). As Maria comes to terms with aging in an industry where good roles dwindle with each passing year, she and Valentine role-play the script, which starts showing strange similarities between their relationship and the codependent one between Helena and Sigrid in the play.
Like Abel Ferrara's somewhat similar and equally pretentious 1993 film DANGEROUS GAME (which at least had a palpable energy and handheld immediacy to it), the lines between life and art blur throughout, because of course they do. Assayas has made some terrific films, and there's fleeting moments of inspiration here that recall his brilliant 1996 breakthrough IRMA VEP, but he just gets lost up his own ass here, and by the end CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA is little more than Assayas jacking himself off in a one-man writer's workshop. It's too bad, because Binoche and Stewart have a very natural, unaffected chemistry together (Stewart is very good here) that deserves a better showcase than Assayas gives them. Binoche has worked with Assayas before (2008's SUMMER HOURS, and she first gained notice in Andre Techine's 1985 Assayas-scripted RENDEZ-VOUS) and this role was obviously created specifically for the Oscar-winning actress. There's nothing smart or edgy in the presentation of Moretz's tabloid bad girl, and while she's fine, the character is the kind of one-dimensional caricature we've seen before. Binoche is a great actress and Stewart is a revelation (she won the Cesar--the French Oscar--for Best Supporting Actress), but CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA is one of those relentlessly talky, self-indulgent, life-imitates-art looks at "the biz" that are apparently enjoyed only by film festival attendees. Why not just call it JULIETTE BINOCHE IS 50: THE MOVIE and be done with it? (R, 124 mins) LET US PREY (UK/Ireland - 2014; US release 2015)
Do filmmakers think it's OK to rip off a terrible movie that nobody saw? Do they think no one will find out? LET US PREY is a convoluted slow-burner that borrows elements of the Stephen King-scripted TV miniseries STORM OF THE CENTURY and a Stuart Gordon-directed FEAR ITSELF episode titled "Eater." But for the bulk of its length, it shamelessly swipes from 2010's THE TRAVELER, a straight-to-DVD Canadian horror film with Val Kilmer--see where his ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU power-tripping got him?--as Mr. Nobody, a supernatural stranger who mysteriously appears at a small-town police station to exact ghostly, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER-style revenge on the squad of six cops who falsely accused him of a crime and tortured him to death. LET US PREY switches up some details but again, we have a supernatural mystery man, in this case Six (GAME OF THRONES' Liam Cunningham) who appears at a police station in the middle of nowhere in Ireland to exact--wait for it--vengeance on a squad of cops. Instead of being the victim, Six is a soul collector, his job to journey from beyond to collect the sinners, and there's plenty among these cops and criminals, including adulterers, drunk drivers, and a serial killer. The moral center is outcast Sgt. Rachel Heggie (Pollyanna McIntosh of OFFSPRING and THE WOMAN), a new transfer who doesn't get along with her co-workers and is a quiet loner with scars both emotional and physical after a traumatic childhood where she was subjected to horrible sexual abuse by her father. Director Brian O'Malley and screenwriters David Cairns and Fiona Watson also throw in a late-in-the-game ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 riff and there's a synthy, John Carpenter-like score, but this is another one of those new horror movies that gets all sorts of accolades from sycophantic publications and fanboys when all it really does is show up and make references. Cribbing most of the plot from a crummy Val Kilmer movie is one thing, but keeping the always-interesting Cunningham locked up and glowering in a jail cell for 90% of his screen time is an even bigger offense. I'll give it credit for some enthusiastically no-holds-barred splatter late in the game, but it's too little, too late. (Unrated, 92 mins)
THE EQUALIZER
(US - 2014) Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Richard Wenk. Cast: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloe Grace Moretz, David Harbour, Melissa Leo, Bill Pullman, Haley Bennett, Johnny Skourtis, David Meunier, Alex Veadov, Vladimir Kulich, Johnny Messner. (R, 134 mins) There's been a growing sentiment that Denzel Washington has spent too much time squandering his talents in too many films that are beneath him. While there's little doubt that he's partaken in some forgettable junk that's been elevated simply by his presence--1995's VIRTUOSITY, 2002's JOHN Q, 2009's terrible remake of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123--his career by and large represents a nicely balanced mix of serious and strictly commercial fare done right. He does a lot of mainstream, popcorn entertainment but he's not so ubiquitous that he starts phoning it in and the audience gets tired of seeing him (I'm looking at you, Nic Cage, Bruce Willis, and Johnny Depp). Moviegoers typically see Washington once, occasionally twice a year, and maybe that's where the "squandering his talent" idea comes into play. He works less frequently than a lot of A-listers, and if he's going to act once a year, the argument is that maybe it should be in something a bit more substantive than 2 GUNS. While Washington is unquestionably one of our greatest actors, there's been a desire by the media and his peers to declare him the Sidney Poitier of his generation. He's always seemed to resist that label, likely out of humble deference as he's frequently professed his love and respect for the trailblazing screen legend (and, it should be noted, Poitier took his share of money gigs in his day, both as an actor and a director). Washington can handle Shakespeare (1993's MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING), and serious, socially-conscious, "important" films (1987's CRY FREEDOM, 1989's GLORY, 1992's MALCOLM X) as well as any actor that's ever stepped onto a movie set. But maybe he just likes making one or two entertaining genre pictures every year or two. Maybe he never wanted the baggage and the artistic expectation and the responsibility that comes with being "the Sidney Poitier of his generation." He elevates commercial fare into higher-quality cinema--no one ever accused 2001's TRAINING DAY of being high art, and yet he won his second Oscar for it. Even when it comes to mainstream genre work, he seems to choose his projects carefully and doesn't jump at any script his agent hands him. When Washington starts turning up in 50 Cent-produced cop thrillers with Forest Whitaker and Robert De Niro or in straight-to-DVD, Eastern Europe-lensed actioners with Dominic Purcell, then we can talk about him squandering his talents.
Besides, we like seeing Washington do his Washington thing. The glowering, the intense stare, the argumentative yet calm tone, that indredulous, derisive laughter and the "Alright, alright!" and the "Ha HAA!" just before he explodes. He's the thinking man's badass. Based on the revered, Golden Globe-winning 1985-1989 CBS series that starred Edward Woodward as Robert McCall, a retired government intelligence agent who has an ad in the classifieds offering help to those in dire situations ("Odds against you? Need help? Call The Equalizer"), THE EQUALIZER only somewhat resembles the TV show (it's also worth noting that Woodward portrayed a seemingly much older McCall than Washington's, yet 59-year-old Washington is currently the same age Woodward was when the show ended). Taking the ending into consideration, it can feasibly be termed an origin story of sorts and possibly Washington's first franchise if it's a big enough hit. Washington's McCall is a Boston widower who leads a quiet, solitary life outside of his job at the Home Depot-like Home Mart. Demonstrating a significant degree of OCD, McCall times everything, has to place objects a certain way, and never deviates from his routine. Suffering from insomnia, he spends the wee hours at a neighborhood diner where he drinks tea and reads literary classics like The Old Man and the Sea while making small talk with Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), a teenage prostitute with aspirations of being a singer. McCall takes note when a bruised and battered Teri is roughed up by some Russian mobsters and when she eventually gets beaten so badly that she ends up in a coma, he pays a visit to her pimp Slavi (David Meunier). McCall offers Slavi $9800 for Teri's freedom. Slavi dismisses McCall's offer, prompting McCall's Spidey Sense to kick in as he single-handedly takes out Slavi and a roomful of cackling Russian goons in just under 30 seconds, disappointed in himself that he estimated it would take just 19 seconds.
McCall's heroic actions have consequences, which arrive in the form of Teddy (Marton Csokas, looking a lot like Kevin Spacey here), a "fixer" for powerful Russian crime lord Pushkin (Vladimir Kulich). The merciless Teddy stops at nothing to find out who took out Slavi and his crew, eventually tracking down McCall, which sets off a war where McCall goes full One Man Army against Teddy and the Russian mob, as well as Det. Masters (David Harbour) and other corrupt Boston cops on Pushkin's payroll. Whether its taking out enforcers, disrupting Pushkin's lucrative businesses, or exposing the cops, judges, and politicians getting kickbacks from Pushkin over his various drug, prostitution, human trafficking, and whatever other nefarious activities, McCall vows to dismantle Pushkin's empire "brick by brick, dollar by dollar, body by body."
THE EQUALIZER reunites Washington with his TRAINING DAY director Antoine Fuqua, who often ends up helming by-the-numbers trifles like SHOOTER (2007) and OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (2013), but sometimes manages to turn out a TRAINING DAY or something like the tragically underrated BROOKLYN'S FINEST (2010). Script duties are handled by Richard Wenk, who's penned the Jason Statham remake of THE MECHANIC (2011) and THE EXPENDABLES 2 (2012). Though covered in a big-budget, A-list sheen, THE EQUALIZER's roots are less in the TV show and more in vintage vigilante fare. Admirably demonstrating balls where something like THE EXPENDABLES 3 felt neutered, the film wears its R rating like a badge of honor as Washington's McCall goes on the kind of rampage that would leave THE EXTERMINATOR cringing: almost nothing is off limits here, as McCall becomes an unleashed animal who fires point blank, opens arteries, and drives a wine corkscrew under a guy's jaw (as Fuqua makes sure we see the impaled utensil rooting around the poor bastard's blood-gushing mouth). And that's just a warm-up for the protracted finale, where Teddy and his men track down McCall to the closed Home Mart, a store whose inventory includes no shortage of gardening shears, drills, nail guns and other lethally handy tools for him to use. Some of the kills in THE EQUALIZER are brutally prolonged and unusually sadistic for a mainstream, studio release.
Of course, that's something that works in its favor, but for the film to really work, you have to be onboard with the star, and Washington displays more than enough gravitas to make the film mostly successful. There's a certain persona that Washington projects in this kind of escapist entertainment, and all of the mannerisms in his playbook are on display throughout. Familiar though they may be, they work because we don't see him in three or four movies a year, doing the same thing. For a Washington fan, when something like SAFE HOUSE (2012), 2 GUNS (2013) or THE EQUALIZER comes along, it's like a welcome visit from an old friend. I'll take Popcorn Denzel over transparent awards bait like FLIGHT (2012), a film that seemed overly calculated to get him another Oscar nomination. At 2 ¼ hours, THE EQUALIZER goes on much longer than is necessary, the primary climax takes place in almost total darkness, and it has an almost Peter Jackson-number of endings. Some details get glossed over, like McCall asking Teddy "How did you find me?" when he shows up at his front door, and never getting an answer. That may be by design and perhaps Fuqua and Wenk are indeed borrowing more from THE EXTERMINATOR (1980) than just the ferocity of McCall's kill methods. In THE EXTERMINATOR, vigilante John Eastland (Robert Ginty) kicks off his spree of vengeance with writer/director James Glickenhaus cutting from one scene straight to Eastland in the middle of torturing one of the punks who killed his best friend. We don't know how Eastland found him and on the Blu-ray commentary, Glickenhaus said that jump was intentional because we know what Eastland is capable of and the audience can just make the leap. It works in THE EXTERMINATOR, and Fuqua and Wenk utilize it here, both with Teddy's ability to find McCall, who more or less lives off the grid other than holding down a job, and in the way we sometimes--despite the film's graphic, over-the-top violence--don't see what McCall does. Maybe we only see the bodies left in McCall's wake or, in the case of a dirtbag robbing Home Mart and stealing an employee's ring, Fuqua shows McCall grabbing a hammer, then cuts to the next day as the employee finds the stolen ring in her cash drawer and McCall cleans off the hammer before returning it to the shelf. We don't need to see what happened. The filmmakers trust us to make the leap, and the acknowledgment of such gets audible laughter from the audience.
Wenk also works in some literary allusions with the premise of The Old Man and the Sea, and Fuqua spends more time than usual developing McCall's character and his routine. It works because it allows Washington to flex his thespian muscles before turning into a relentless killing machine. Also, witness the way insomniac McCall gets his first good night's sleep in ages after wiping out Slavi's crew. More so than many a vigilante genre protagonist, McCall can put up a good front when it comes to living a "normal" life and being part of society, but he really only finds inner peace during conflict. Wenk's script also draws parallels between McCall and Teddy (thankfully sparing us from Teddy gravely intoning "We're alike...you and I" to McCall), and it demonstrates just how focused on McCall's character and his world Fuqua is that Csokas doesn't even appear until 40 minutes into the film. This slow buildup works, but as the film goes on, some of the extraneous subplots, especially two involving McCall's overweight co-worker Ralphie (Johnny Skourtis)--who wants to get in shape for a security job and has a restaurant-owning mom who's being shaken down for protection money by a pair of on-the-take cops who have nothing to do with Pushkin or Teddy--only serve to drag the story down once all the pieces are in place. Much of the second-half plot details are filler that could've been dumped with no damage being done, along with a scene of McCall walking away from a CGI explosion that's almost Asylum-esque in its inexcusable shittiness. Melissa Leo has a small role as McCall's old agency boss, but then we also get a few scenes with her husband--played by Bill Pullman, who looks like he's ready to duke it out with Treat Williams over who gets the lead in THE MITT ROMNEY STORY--which does absolutely nothing to advance any element of the story whatsoever. THE EQUALIZER is an entertaining film with Washington at his most commanding, but it's merely pretty good where there's a potentially very good film that could've come from a little tightening. McCall spends a lot of time riding Ralphie about dropping some pounds. It's too bad Washington didn't get on Fuqua about shedding maybe 25 minutes of bloat from THE EQUALIZER.
Directed by Kimberly Peirce. Written by Lawrence D. Cohen and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. Cast: Chloe Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Judy Greer, Portia Doubleday, Gabriella Wilde, Alex Russell, Ansel Elgort, Barry Shabaka Henley, Hart Bochner, Zoe Belkin, Samantha Weinstein. (R, 98 mins)
(SPOILERS DISCUSSED THROUGHOUT)
The latest Hollywood horror remake is as unnecessary as you'd expect, despite the involvement of BOYS DON'T CRY and STOP-LOSS director Kimberly Peirce, helming just her third film in 14 years. Considering how little she brings to the table here, one must be forced to assume that she simply needed the money. This "re-imagining" of the 1974 Stephen King novel and 1976 Brian De Palma film (there was also a 2002 made-for-TV remake, and the less said about 1999's THE RAGE: CARRIE 2, the better) is about as perfunctory and go-through-the-motions as it gets, remaining watchable and never dull but also never justifying its existence. It utilizes enough of the 1976 film that its screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen shares a presumably WGA-mandated credit with playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who must share the blame with Peirce for its complete collapse in the home stretch.
The now-familiar story of bullied, telekinetic Carrie White (played here by Chloe Grace Moretz), her religious-fanatic mother Margaret (Julianne Moore), and a prom prank that goes horribly awry was turned into such an iconic classic by De Palma that Peirce seems to throw in the towel from the start. CARRIE '13 seems to be sprinting past the details, glossing over dramatic and character developments as if to say "Well, you've seen the original enough times, so you know what happens here." It's almost like it's Cliffs Notes-ing its way through the proceedings. As a result, there's no tension. There's no suspense. When bitchy Chris Hargenson (Portia Doubleday) and dirtbag boyfriend Billy Nolan (Alex Russell) dump the bucket of pig's blood on Carrie at the prom, De Palma's depiction was a stylish, elaborately-choreographed masterwork of stomach-knotting anticipation and dread. Here...it just gets dumped. It's a lose-lose for Peirce: she can't mimic De Palma's split diopters and split-screens without getting shit for it, and his work was so good that it can't be topped, so she's forced to just dump it in the blandest way possible. She tries to gussy it up by replaying it three times but it serves no purpose. There's not even the "They're all gonna laugh at you!" refrain. This problem occurs time and again throughout CARRIE '13. Everything effective under De Palma is neutered or outright absent here. But could it have turned out any other way?
Peirce and Aguirre-Sacasa do include a few elements from King's novel that didn't make it into De Palma's version: there's a brief shot of a court inquiry where Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) is being questioned, Chris' big-shot lawyer dad (Hart Bochner sighting!) unsuccessfully tries to throw his weight around with the principal (Barry Shabaka Henley) after his daughter is suspended from school, and gym teacher Miss Desjardin (Judy Greer) gets her original name back and survives Carrie's prom rampage (Betty Buckley played her as "Miss Collins" and got killed), but they also make the curious decision to tone down the character of Margaret. This could be because Piper Laurie played it just crazy enough without going over-the-top that Moore saw no way to improve on it from that angle. Moore is fine in the role, but Margaret is really less of a menace here than she is in the 1976 film and in the book. In King and De Palma, Margaret fears her daughter but also despises her and her burgeoning womanhood, "the blood," and "the boys who come sniffing like dogs, grinning and slobbering to find out where that smell is." Laurie's interpretation of the character was intimidating and terrifying, where Moore plays Margaret as more overprotective and demonstrates far more affection than she shows in the book or in Laurie's Oscar-nominated performance.
There's no problems with Moretz in terms of her performance, but at the risk of simplifying things, she's too attractive to play Carrie, and slouching her shoulders, hiding behind her hair, and wearing frumpy garments isn't going to disguise that. She's a terrific young actress, but she's just not right for this role. Even Sissy Spacek--also Oscar-nominated--didn't fit King's description of a "chunky" Carrie, and while De Palma didn't cast someone overweight in the role, she was one of those actresses who thrived in the 1970s when unconventional looks were acceptable. Spacek is not someone who's conventionally "hot" by a standard textbook Hollywood definition, either in the 1970s or now. She has an unconventional beauty to her but she also had a plain, "odd" quality that was well-utilized by De Palma and other directors like Terrence Malick in 1973's BADLANDS and Robert Altman in 1977's 3 WOMEN (even MAY star and horror/cult figure Angela Bettis, in the 2002 version, has an unusual look to her to that made her a believable Carrie). Moretz looks gorgeous even when she's trying not to be. By the time we get to the prom rampage, Moretz's Carrie starts behaving like someone who's seen CARRIE. Instead of slowly walking through the gym and wreaking her vengeance, Moretz has been directed to wildly contort and symphonically gesticulate with wild-eyed abandon, looking more like a villain in the climax of an X-MEN movie than Carrie.
It's the prom where the film really starts to fall apart, despite newcomer Elgort's surprisingly sensitive interpretation of Tommy Ross, though he may not have William Katt's legendary locks (perhaps one improvement this film makes is ensuring the audience knows Tommy has been killed by the bucket hitting his head; Tommy's fate always seemed vague in De Palma's film until it's mentioned in passing near the end). In the book, nearly everyone was killed, and De Palma even killed off the sympathetic gym teacher after Carrie imagined her laughing at her. Here, Carrie kills a few people and most seem to escape. But Peirce and Aguirre-Sacasa save the worst for last, as they inexplicably have Sue show up at the White home after Carrie kills her mother. They have a conversation and Carrie sees Sue wasn't involved in the prank, and tells her "You're going to have a girl." Yes, Sue is now pregnant with Tommy's child (hinted at but never overtly stated by King, as Sue either gets her period or miscarries near the end of the novel) and Carrie has somehow developed psychic abilities. Does this have anything to do with Carrie's ability to move things? If so, then why wasn't she able to see the prank that was about to happen?
CARRIE '13 is competently-made and there's nothing wrong with the actors. The biggest issue is the same as with most other horror remakes: it just doesn't need to exist. With one exception (Tommy's death scene), it doesn't improve on anything, it isn't better-directed, the ending can't be anything but lame compared to De Palma's, the CGI visual effects are less convincing than the practical ones from 37 years ago, and the usually reliable Marco Beltrami offers a snoozer of a score in place of the unforgettable Pino Donaggio cues in the 1976 version. All it really adds are newer fashions, cell phones, Chris posting a video of the shower incident on YouTube, and one already-dated mention of Tim Tebow. De Palma's film is one that's been talked about and revered for nearly 40 years. Will anyone remember this remake 40 days from now?
Written and directed by Jeff Wadlow. Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jim Carrey, Morris Chestnut, John Leguizamo, Clark Duke, Donald Faison, Iain Glen, Steven Mackintosh, Monica Dolan, Lindy Booth, Andy Nyman, Benedict Wong, Garrett M. Brown, Yancy Butler, Matt Steinberg, Claudia Lee, Augustus Prew, Lyndsy Fonseca, Daniel Kaluuya, Tom Wu, Olga Kurkulina, Ella Purnell, Tanya Fear. (R, 105 mins)
Matthew Vaughn's 2010 film version of the controversial Mark Millar-written/John Romita, Jr-illustrated comic book was, like its source, an acquired taste. Moments of extreme violence combined with a little girl using some of the most over-the-top gutter language imaginable outraged some, while others--myself among them--found it funny and quite inspired. Vaughn is still onboard as producer for the sequel, handing the franchise over to writer-director Jeff Wadlow, whose previous credits include the 2005 slasher film CRY WOLF and the 2008 teen martial arts actioner NEVER BACK DOWN. Lightning doesn't strike twice with KICK-ASS 2, which reunites most of the main cast but is markedly lacking in energy and seems to be struggling to find a reason to exist.
Dave Lizewsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is no longer fighting crime as costumed superhero Kick-Ass, much to the disappointment of orphaned Mindy Macready (Chloe Grace Moretz)--aka Hit Girl--who now lives with guardian and cop Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut) after the death of her ex-cop father Damon (Nicolas Cage in the first film), aka superhero Big Daddy. Dave gets back in the Kick-Ass game just as Mindy gets out, having realized it's time to put away the past and get on with being a teenager. Meanwhile, vengeful Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), son of the mobster killed by Kick-Ass in the first film (played there by Mark Strong), abandons his Red Mist superhero persona and remakes himself as the ultimate supervillain, donning S&M leather gear and christening himself "The Motherfucker." The Motherfucker recruits a team of arch-villains--among them Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina), Black Death (Daniel Kaluuya), The Tumor (Andy Nyman), and Genghis Carnage (Tom Wu) to form an evil army called "The Toxic Megacunts," who set out to destroy Kick-Ass and bring the city to its knees.
The formula just isn't nearly as much fun the second time around. I never thought I'd say this, but the vital ingredient missing from KICK-ASS 2 is the down-to-earth humanity that Nicolas Cage brought to the first film, particularly in his loving, well-meaning but misguided relationship with his daughter. In recent years, Cage generally hasn't been one to keep a film grounded, but Wadlow's main goal here just seems to be as childishly offensive as possible, and it's still watered down from Millar's original comic book version. Moretz has grown quite a bit in the last three years, and since she's not a little kid anymore, there isn't the same level of transgressive amusement in having her say things like "cunt," "cocksucker," and "snatch." Mintz-Plasse has some funny moments as The Motherfucker, but he doesn't have much to do other than rage and yell. Taylor-Johnson is so bland that he practically vanishes from the screen, which isn't a quality one looks for in a lead character. He and Moretz (who really doesn't seem like she wants to be here) made a great team in the first film, but now that she's grown, sexual tension enters the fray and Wadlow spends too much time on their everyday lives, especially with Mindy trying to fit in at school with a clique of mean girls led by the bitchy Brooke (Claudia Lee), a subplot that culminates in projectile vomiting and diarrhea, and gets more screen time than big-name franchise addition Jim Carrey as Col. Stars & Stripes, a patriotic ex-mob enforcer and born-again Christian who leads a group of costumed heroes aiding Kick-Ass in his battle against The Motherfucker.
Carrey infamously denounced KICK-ASS 2 in the weeks before its release, saying that the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre changed his outlook on the film and cinematic depictions of violence in general. It's possible he knew the movie stunk and didn't want his fans to see it for him only to find that he's barely in it. The trailers sold Stars & Stripes as being a wild, crazy, Jim Carrey kind-of character, but other than a couple of ad-libs ("Yeah, there's a dog on your balls!"), his performance is very low-key and, in relation to Moretz and Mintz-Plasse, played fairly straight (he even tells people to stop swearing). With only a few scenes, it's a minor supporting role at best--he appears 30 minutes in and is gone by the 60-minute mark--and it's surprising that Carrey even took the job considering how little he has to do. And speaking of people who should have better things to do, why is John Leguizamo here in a nothing role as The Motherfucker's driver? Leguizamo's not a great actor, but he has headlined major movies. Leguizamo doesn't bring anything uniquely his to this role, and like Carrey's Stars & Stripes, it's a role that anybody could've played.
KICK-ASS 2 has a larger cast of characters but gives them less to do with weaker characterizations. Some occasional laughs, yeah...but a lot of jokes land with a thud and the greenscreen and CGI work in a climactic car chase is just embarrassingly bad, creating absolutely zero tension or excitement. Having thoroughly enjoyed the first film, I really tried to like this, but then realized I was putting more effort into trying to like this than the filmmakers put into making it.
