THE EQUALIZER 2 (US - 2018) Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Richard Wenk. Cast: Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Melissa Leo, Bill Pullman, Ashton Sanders, Orson Bean, Jonathan Scarfe, Sakina Jaffrey, Kazy Tauginas, Garrett A. Golden. (R, 122 mins) In the first sequel of his nearly 40-year career, the great Denzel Washington again demonstrates enough intensity and steely gravitas to elevate a routine and generic revenge actioner to slightly above average entertainment. Loosely based on the fondly-remembered 1985-89 CBS series THE EQUALIZER, the big-screen franchise--please don't call the next one THE 3QUALIZER--is the fourth teaming of Washington with his TRAINING DAY director Antoine Fuqua, and only slightly retains the premise of retired CIA agent Robert McCall (played by Edward Woodward in the series) offering his services to those in trouble and with nowhere else to turn. With Washington's interpretation of the character already established, the sequel is really just a high-end version of the kind of vigilante movies Charles Bronson would crank out for Cannon in the 1980s. Globetrotting from Istanbul to Brussels to D.C. to Boston, it does give Washington's McCall, a widower who leads a solitary existence and drives a Lyft part-time (he was apparently let go from his Home Depot job after the last film's in-store nail-gun and powertool bloodbath), a chance to help a few people in need: a young girl taken from her mother to her Turkish father's homeland; artistically-gifted teen Miles (MOONLIGHT's Ashton Sanders), who lives in his Boston apartment complex and is tempted by gang life; and elderly Holocaust survivor Sam Rubinstein (Orson Bean sighting!), who's spent his life unsuccessfully searching for both a stolen painting and his younger sister after they were separated as kids and sent to different concentration camps.
Of course, these subplots that most resemble the Woodward series are secondary to the crux of THE EQUALIZER 2, which has McCall investigating the murder of his former CIA boss Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo) in Brussels where she was working with Interpol on a husband/wife murder-suicide that looks staged (because it was) and may have agency ties (SPOILER: it does). McCall seeks out the help of his former partner Dave York (Pedro Pascal), who's understandably shocked to learn that he faked his own death years earlier with the assistance of Plummer. McCall does some snooping on his own, which leads to an attempt on his life by a hired killer under the guise of a Lyft passenger in a nicely-done action sequence. Plummer was obviously about to blow the doors off of something big, and the truth could be--wait for it--closer than McCall realizes.
There's very little in the way of surprises in the cookie-cutter script by mercenary screenwriter Richard Wenk (THE MECHANIC, THE EXPENDABLES 2, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN), and even less in logic in some spots, especially with a climax that's essentially HIGH NOON in a hurricane in an evacuated seaside town. McCall's superhero-like Spidey Sense is one thing, but it's truly amazing how he arrived just as the storm was reaching peak strength with the bad guys very close behind, yet he still had time to plaster a stack of Melissa Leo headshots all over the place with which to taunt the killers as they search for him (also, on the way there, he had Brennan's husband, played by Bill Pullman, riding shotgun but lost him somewhere because he just disappears from both McCall's car and the movie). Like its predecessor, THE EQUALIZER 2 is harmless, brainless action fare, though it tones down the over-the-top gore until the climax, when McCall commences the throat slashings, disembowelings, and eye-gougings. It exists for no other reason than to solidify 63-year-old Washington's place in the post-TAKEN geriatric action scene (though Washington looks younger than his age, it's interesting to note how much older Woodward seemed on the TV series, which ended when the veteran British actor was just 59) and to serve as content on streaming and cable in perpetuity by this time next year. Even when he makes a bad movie--VIRTUOSITY and the terrible remake of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123--Washington is incapable of phoning it in and going through the motions. He has some good moments here and seems to be enjoying himself, even showing some of the TRAINING DAY edginess in a few spots and putting forth more effort than you'd see from a lot of his contemporaries. It's dumb, it's reasonably entertaining, and you won't remember any of it by the time you get to the parking lot. It's a summer movie.
ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ. (US/Canada/China/UAE - 2017) Written and directed by Dan Gilroy. Cast: Denzel Washington, Colin Farrell, Carmen Ejogo, Lynda Gravatt, Amanda Warren, Hugo Armstrong, Sam Gilroy, Tony Plana, DeRon Horton, Amari Cheathom, Nazneen Contractor, Niles Fitch, Elisa Perry, Annie Sertich, Esperanza Spalding, Just N. Time. (PG-13, 122 mins)
Veteran journeyman screenwriter Dan Gilroy made his directing debut three years ago with the critically acclaimed NIGHTCRAWLER, and coaxed a career-best performance out of Jake Gyllenhaal in the process. It was a challenge to base a film around one of the most repulsive protagonists in recent memory--Louis Bloom, a petty thief specializing in copper wire and chain-link fencing who makes a name for himself selling accident and murder footage to a desperate, bottom-ranked L.A. news station--and Gilroy explores similar themes with the legal drama ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ. Played by the great Denzel Washington, the titular character is ultimately just as morally and ethically challenged as Louis Bloom, but he's not a bad guy. He's just as much of a misfit, though where Bloom was an unrepentant sociopath, Los Angeles defense attorney Roman J. Israel is a savant who eats nothing but peanut butter sandwiches and has the entire California legal code memorized. He works behind the scenes as part of a two-man firm, and his elderly partner--the face of the practice and the guy who appears in court--has just gone into a coma after a massive heart attack, leaving the abrasive and socially awkward Roman--in no way a people person--to handle his cases in front of a series of increasingly exasperated judges. Roman is a career civil rights activist with a borderline Cornel West afro, unfashionable eyewear, and mismatched, ill-fitting, ragged suits that look like they've been worn for 30 years (Washington's also wearing some padding to add a little girth to his midsection). He has a brilliant legal mind, which is why his partnership with his aged colleague has worked, but with the old man out of the picture, the practice has been handed over, per his wishes, to slick, high-priced criminal lawyer George Pierce (Colin Farrell), a former student and protege of whom Roman was completely unaware. The practice has been losing money due to its taking on a large of pro bono, social activism cases that Roman lives for, so with the blessing of the ailing lawyer's family, Pierce shuts it down and reluctantly agrees to take Roman on as an attorney at his own hugely successful firm.
With Roman's appearance and his dinosaur ways--he has a battered, ancient flip phone and hates computers, relying on index cards, countless Post-Its, and voluminous stacks of documents precariously clipped and rubber-banded together--Gilroy could've just as easily taken this situation and made it a mismatched, fish-out-of-water buddy comedy. Instead, it's a character piece and a morality play where Roman, who can't help but burn bridges at Pierce's office because that's what he does, snaps after nearly losing his job over his botched handling of client Derrell Ellerbee (DeRon Horton), a 17-year-old being charged as an accessory in the murder of an Armenian convenience store clerk. The shooter was Carter Johnson (Amari Cheathom), who's now a fugitive but Derrell secretly told Roman his whereabouts in exchange for the possibility of a reduced sentence. When Derrell turns up with throat slashed in the jailhouse shower the next day and Pierce informs him his termination is imminent since he angrily hung up on the prosecuting attorney and never conveyed her offer to Derrell, Roman decides he's had enough after nearly 40 years of "doing the impossible for the ungrateful." When an Armenian community center offers $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of the shooter, Roman anonymously provides the info and collects the reward money. He treats himself to a weekend vacation, buys some new suits, gets a new haircut and signs a lease at a posh apartment building. He plays ball and takes on some easy money cases at Pierce's practice and starts making friends, quickly seeing that playing the legal game and putting his hardball activist dedication aside--including an epic class action lawsuit he's been working on for seven years that he insists will redefine the nature of legal defenses and the concept of plea bargaining--means he can finally live the good life he's denied himself for decades ("My failures are self-inflicted," he tells Pierce). It should go without saying that Roman's impulsive actions will eventually blow up in his face, especially when a jailed Carter retains the services of Pierce, who hands the case off to...who else?
Washington is terrific as Roman, even if his actorly affectations indicate that the film can't seem to decide if Roman's spectrum-stretching issues are that he's Rain Man, an OCD case, a social anxiety sufferer, or if he has Asperger's (the film seems to conflate them all under one all-purpose special needs umbrella). He manages to alienate everyone he meets, with the exception of Maya (Carmen Ejogo), an earnest volunteer activist for a civil rights group who comes to appreciate Roman's dedication to the cause, and more or less serves as his conscience once he starts wearing expensive suits and dining at classy restaurants. Washington's performance is effective, but at the same time, it's pure Oscar bait, and Gilroy's story just doesn't have any real foundation at its base, especially once it veers into commercial thriller territory in the third act. Roman's character arc is obvious and simplistic, and Washington is required to go through several scenes where he looks in a mirror and regards his flashy new appearance and silently ponders What I've Become. If Maya is Roman's conscience, then Pierce is the Roman that might've been--a beloved protege to Roman's partner who had the interpersonal chops to be a successful lawyer both philosophically and financially. Pierce is a good lawyer as well as a good businessman. Ultimately, he's hardly the unscrupulous shark we expect him to be based on his high-priced suits and slicked-back hair, even though his demeanor changes from scene to scene, especially in his attitude toward Roman.
After ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ--filmed under the generic title INNER CITY--screened to a middling response at the Toronto Film Festival, Gilroy recut some scenes and excised approximately 15 minutes to get it to its present, 122-minute length (Gilroy said much of the changes dealt with Farrell's character, which may explain why Pierce's attitude is so hard to pin down). Even now, its structure still seems off, especially after an opening that sets up the story as a flashback beginning three weeks earlier, which seems like an awfully short amount of time for this entire story to go down. NIGHTCRAWLER was a film that probably would've been a lot more scathing and hard-hitting if it didn't take place in such a cynical era, but it has a mesmerizing performance to make you look past it. ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ doesn't even have the limited substance of NIGHTCRAWLER and even pilfers some of its ideas and observations, coming up just a bit short even though it gets a lot out of an expectedly outstanding performance from Washington.
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (US - 2016) Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Nic Pizzolatto and Richard Wenk. Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Peter Sarsgaard, Haley Bennett, Luke Grimes, Matt Bomer, Cam Gigandet, Jonathan Joss, Sean Bridgers, William Lee Scott, Griff Furst. (PG-13, 133 mins) As unnecessary as almost any remake nowadays, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN brings some revisionist multi-culturalism to the table but little else, instead choosing to coast by on the strength of its cast. And when that cast is headed by the always excellent Denzel Washington, it's enough to get the job done, even if it has zero chance of escaping the shadow of either John Sturges' 1960 original or that film's inspiration, Akira Kurosawa's immortal 1954 masterpiece SEVEN SAMURAI (and, lest we forget, the Roger Corman-produced STAR WARS-inspired variant BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS and Bruno Mattei's 1984 sword-and-sandal take THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS). Washington is reunited with his TRAINING DAY and THE EQUALIZER director Antoine Fuqua and his TRAINING DAY co-star Ethan Hawke (also in Fuqua's BROOKLYN'S FINEST), who also brought along his BFF Vincent D'Onofrio (also with Hawke in THE NEWTON BOYS, STATEN ISLAND, BROOKLYN'S FINEST, and SINISTER and a star of the Hawke-directed CHELSEA WALLS), who was in JURASSIC WORLD with Chris Pratt, giving MAGNIFICENT '16 the feeling that everyone involved is having a good time with old friends. That helps, because the story itself is as standard and formulaic as it gets, adding an unnecessary revenge element in the late-going that veers from the sense of selfless altruism and sacrifice that was key to the heart and soul of SEVEN SAMURAI and MAGNIFICENT '60. It undermines it to a point where you feel that Washington's character has essentially lured these other six saps on a suicide mission, but that's probably putting more thought into this than Fuqua and co-writers Nic Pizzolatto (TRUE DETECTIVE) and Richard Wenk (THE EXPENDABLES 2 and, yes, THE EQUALIZER) had in mind. MAGNIFICENT '16 isn't likely to be mistaken for a great western, but it's entertaining, fast-moving, and the cast--most of it, anyway--is solid enough to help gloss over the bumps along the way.
In the years following the Civil War, the small frontier town of Rose Creek is under siege by malevolent robber baron Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), who couldn't be any more predestined for villainy if he was named Snidely Whiplash. Bogue wants to commandeer a nearby gold mine and offers the citizens either $20 each for their parcel of land, or death, giving them three weeks to decide. When Bogue and his henchman murder several of the town's men in cold blood, including rancher Matthew Cullen (Matt Bomer), Cullen's widow Emma (Jennifer Lawrence lookalike Haley Bennett) ventures to the next town to hire bounty hunter Sam Chisolm (Washington), offering him every penny Rose Creek has to take on Bogue and his goons. Chisolm recruits local gambler and wiseass Josh Faraday (Pratt) and they in turn bring in others--sharpshooter and Civil War PTSD case Goodnight Robichaux (Hawke), his knife-throwing Asian pal Bobby Rocks (Byung Hun-Lee), Mexican outlaw Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), eccentric tracker Jack Horne (D'Onofrio), and (noir/hard-boiled guy Pizzolato really showing some Dashiell Hammett love here) Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier), a lone Comanche cast out by his tribe. They arrive in Rose Creek and send a message to Bogue by killing all of his regulators charged with keeping an eye on things. Together with Emma and her husband's friend Teddy Q (Luke Grimes), these seven warriors establish a bonding camaraderie as they fortify Rose Creek, training the terrified residents to defend themselves, knowing the nefarious Bogue is on his way with a few hundred men to level it and massacre everyone.
It's a story that's been told so many times that there's nothing in the way of surprises, and the new additions don't really fly, whether it's the incongruity of the melting pot make-up of this post-Civil War motley crew or the late addition of a Chisolm revenge subplot that makes his reasons for doing this personal. The actors are generally good, with Pratt brought on to be Chris Pratt and Washington being the fearsome and intense badass that he always is in Fuqua films. Looking thin and frail, Hawke's Goodnight Robichaux seems to be going for a Val Kilmer-in-TOMBSTONE riff that never materializes, and Lee, Garcia-Rulfo, and Sensmeier don't really get any defining characteristics other than being Asian, Mexican, and Native American, respectively. A madman-bearded and typically mannered D'Onofrio, who too often overacts rather than acts these days, turns in a grating performance, using a high-pitched, wheezing squeal that seems to be his idea of an insane Andy Devine. A sweaty, twitchy Sarsgaard is gifted with a great western bad guy name in Bartholomew Bogue, but is otherwise pretty one-dimensional, coming off like a stock western baddie version of Gary Oldman's crazed DEA agent in THE PROFESSIONAL. It also doesn't make any sense that, after losing about 150 guys in the attack on Rose Creek to gunfire and explosive booby-traps lined along the town's perimeter, only then does Bogue order his few remaining toadies to bring him the Gatling gun to mow down dozens of Rose Creek citizens. Why wouldn't he just use that in the first place? MAGNIFICENT '16 also ends on a sour note that reeks of studio meddling, with a completely needless coda featuring voiceover by Bennett's Emma, culminating in the dumbest invocation of a movie's title since I AM LEGEND faded to black with Alice Braga narration declaring "This is his legend." MAGNIFICENT '16 works just fine as empty calorie, junk-food cinema, and Washington's gritty persona carries it far enough that you can't imagine the sense of sheer mediocrity the entire project would convey without him.
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 Baltasar Kormakur. Written by Blake Masters. Cast: Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Paula Patton, Edward James Olmos, Bill Paxton, James Marsden, Fred Ward, Robert John Burke, Greg Sproles, Patrick Fischler, Azure Parsons, Ambyr Childers. (R, 110 mins)
Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg are, respectively, Bobby Trench and Stig (why wasn't this called TRENCH & STIG?), two mid-level criminals trying to set up a coke deal with Mexican cartel boss Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos). Papi's feeling some heat and isn't transporting any coke, so an irate Stig decides to steal the $3 million that Papi keeps in a safe deposit box in a bank in a small Texas town near the border. Stig doesn't know that Trench is an undercover DEA agent who's spent three years infiltrating Papi's organization, and Trench doesn't know that Stig is a disgraced Naval intelligence officer, working for his C.O. Quince (James Marsden) to obtain Papi's cash to fund secret, off-the-books Naval operations. Trench and Stig blow up the bank vault and are shocked to find not $3 million, but $43 million that Papi insists is not his, setting off a war between the DEA, the Navy, the CIA, Papi's soldiers, and crazed assassin Earl (Bill Paxton), who represents the owners of the extra $40 million, a crew that even the all-powerful Papi fears, as Trench and Stig find themselves pursued and on the run, forced to set aside their differences and work together...if they don't kill each other first!
2 GUNS doesn't put forth a lot of effort and gets by primarily on the chemistry of the two stars, who seem to enjoy playing off each other. Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur (who also directed Wahlberg in last year's CONTRABAND) does his job with a minimum of flash and style, keeping the action brisk and the insults flying in a film so formulaic that you almost expect it to already have the TNT logo in the lower right corner of the frame for the duration. With a less enthused cast, it probably wouldn't have worked, but Washington and Wahlberg play this perfectly, and sometimes a dumb action movie comes along at the right time and just fits the bill. The stars get solid support from a strong supporting cast, which also features Paula Patton as Trench's DEA partner and ex, Robert John Burke as Trench's boss, and Fred Ward as an Admiral. In the end, 2 GUNS is only slightly less generic than its title, but it's fully cognizant of what it is and concentrates on its strengths. It's rarely plausible and the biggest impact it will have from a pop culture standpoint will likely be a couple of topless Patton shots causing the Mr. Skin site to crash, but it's fast, funny, and entertaining, and at this point in the summer, that works just fine.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Written by John Gatins. Cast: Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Melissa Leo, Bruce Greenwood, Tamara Tunie, Nadine Velazquez, Brian Geraghty, Keven Gerety, James Badge Dale, Garcelle Beauvais. (R, 139 mins)
Veteran airline pilot Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) wakes up in an airport hotel room in Orlando with a naked woman and a floor littered with empty bottles. Groggy and hungover, he does a quick line of coke to balance himself out. It's 7:00 am and he's piloting a 9:00 am flight to Atlanta. The woman, Katerina (Nadine Velazquez) is one of his flight's attendants. Whip is good to go and feelin' alright, as evidenced by a shot of Washington striding through the airport terminal to the tune of Joe Cocker's version of Traffic's "Feelin' Alright."
The planned 52-minute flight experiences some major turbulence but Whip gets them through it. Only later, after Whip hands the controls over to co-pilot Ken Evans (Brian Geraghty), pours three mini bottles of Smirnoff into his orange juice and takes a quick nap in the pilot's seat, does all hell break loose. The plane starts to nosedive and and West's steering mechanisms fail. Whip decides to "roll" the plane by veering it to the point where it flies upside down, evening out the plane and stopping the dive. All power eventually fails and Whip guides the plane to a crash landing just past a small church (MESSAGE!), losing six of the 102 passengers onboard. Two crew members are killed, including Katerina. Whip's daring method of handling the crash turns him into a hero, but there's a problem. Standard NTSB protocol after a crash is to draw blood for analysis. Whip was battered in the crash and unconscous for several hours and doesn't recall the blood being drawn. They find the alcohol and cocaine in his system, and despite the clear reason for the crash being a faulty rear elevator assembly that caused the plane to nosedive, Whip's extracurricular actitivies present the possiblity that he's on the hook for manslaughter in the passenger deaths.
FLIGHT would seem to offer Washington the kind of tour de force that results in instant Oscar buzz. He's a great actor, one of the best, but even he has a hard time elevating this beyond the point of hackneyed and predictable. After the harrowing opening 20 or so minutes, the film turns into the kind of by-the-numbers addiction drama that frankly, we've seen a hundred times before. While in the hospital, Whip meets Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a heroin addict recovering from an overdose, and they become friends after he's discharged. She cleans up her act and tries to help him, but Whip, the kind of guy who doesn't need any help and shuts out anyone who tries, continues to drink and use. Director Robert Zemeckis, helming his first live-action film since 2000's CAST AWAY, can't resist repeatedly hammering home the plot points over and over again, usually with the ham-fisted use of a popular song accompanying the scene just in case the audience is too dense to get it. Was it necessary for a scene of Reilly shooting up to use both the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge" and Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane"? Or to have Whip's dealer (John Goodman) introduced to the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil"? FLIGHT starts out believably grim and realistic--as a character, the arrogant, irresponsible Whip is only slightly less of an asshole than Washington's Alonzo Harris in TRAINING DAY--but it grows increasingly "Hollywood" the more it proceeds towards it inevitably uplifting ending. Allowing Whip some level of redemption is fine, but the path to it just feels hollow. Zemeckis and screenwriter John Gatins (COACH CARTER, REAL STEEL) completely lose it in the home stretch when the perpetually self-destructive Whip falls off the wagon hard the night before a federal hearing and his lawyer (Don Cheadle) and union rep (Bruce Greenwood) resort to methods of sobering him up that very nearly turn the film into a comedy. Let's just say it prompts Zemeckis to use an instrumental Muzak version of The Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends."
There's a lot of good things about FLIGHT. Washington commands the screen, which should surprise no one. British actress Reilly believably handles a southern American accent. The terrifying crash sequence is easily the film's highlight. But the film just really loses its way in the second half before utterly collapsing in the last half hour. A lot of us have seen functioning alcoholics in action, but FLIGHT takes functioning alcoholism to ridiculous extremes, with Whip consuming amounts of alcohol that no one could handle, let alone fly a plane or calmly testify at a hearing. At some point, despite a solid start, FLIGHT becomes less concerned with the plausible depiction of Whip's personal hell and more focused on getting Denzel Washington another Oscar.
