Gender: Male Location: On a rock, floating through space..
I'll watch this. I thought Denzel made a decent Creasy, even though the ending was a complete betrayal of the character and the original story. F@cking Hollywood - and don't even get me started on using a freaking midget to play the role of a 230 pound, 6 foot 5 ex-MP. Child is such a sell-out.
Though, admittedly, if Hollywood offered me enough money I suppose I could always salve my conscience with booze and broads. Just hope Cruise doesn't return for the next one.
Yikes, getting a bit side-tracked there. Mini rant over. Like I said, I'll watch this - but probably not on the big screen.
Gender: Male Location: 4th Street Underpass, Manhattan
My review of The Equalizer:
I love Antoine Fuqua. He is IMO the American Luc Besson. He can take any disreputable subject matter and make it interesting as hell. I loved Olympus Has Fallen, Shooter, and Tears of The Sun. Here we have a film that I can best describe as an awesome hard-R violent action breed of The Bourne Series and Burn Notice, with the cherry on top of Denzel Washington.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
Like the two aforementioned titles, this film is about an omnicompetent badass, Robert McCall, who lives in a peaceful life of normalcy in Boston until a prostitute he befriends is brutally beaten by her Russian pimps. After he fails to buy her freedom with $9,800, he brutally kills the entire roomful of Russian goons as payback. His vigilantism continues when he intimidates two cops to pay back the money he extorted from his friend's mother, and takes back the ring from a robber who stole it from his dept. store. After the Russian mobsters find out his identity and attempt to kill him, he goes on his own tactical and meticulous rampage taking down their entire Boston operation. This leads to a climax in a dept. store that is somewhat like Die Hard (not that I found this bad) only if the protagonist was a violent mixture of MacGuyver and Rambo. After going to Moscow and taking care of the head boss personally, he begins life helping the helpless as The Equalizer.
Fuqua's direction is excellent in this film and although it may feel tedious at times due to it's length, the story is thoroughly engaging and entertaining, and Washington obviously nails the serene role of McCall.
Compared to other action heroes McCall ranks very high up there. He displays a Bourne/Holmes-like ability to instantly (represented as slo mo) see variables in a situation that will provide a tactical advantage, very meticulous, to a near OCD-level, especially in terms of time calculation, and even counting out the exact amount of multiple giant stacks of hundreds of millions of dollars, nigh-stoppable in CQB, easily breaking bones and necks and having gun-snatching reflexes, his only true physical opponent in the film being a giant Russian who was tanking multiple stab wounds like nothing, skilled in electronics, mechanical engineering, surveillance, interrogation, stealth, explosives (blowing up an oil tanker belonging to Russian mobsters), and as stated above, MacGuyver/Rambo-esque tactical improvisation. He's rather durable, having cauterized a bullet wound at two points in the film and being no worse for the wear, the second point right before he fought the big Russian. He never uses a gun once in the film (although he turns a Russian goons gun on himself at one point), as he is quick enough to disarm/maim/kill his opponents a la Bourne, although given his slo-mo I have no doubt he's a good shot. His intellect combined with his lethality definitely make him one of the deadliest action heroes of the contemporary age.
My only complaint would be it's pacing. The film is very long. That being stated, I can not think of any part I would have wanted to be cut out. I think the problem is that Fuqua relishes quite a bit in the directing at some points, although it's not a hindrance on the film by any means and in fact adds to it's quality.
This film was a great popcorn action flick a la Taken. It was exactly what the trailer promised and based on the sequel, was an excellent origin story for the action hero of the new age.
Gender: Male Location: 4th Street Underpass, Manhattan
It deserves it. Definitely one of the best action films I've seen in a while, and probably the best action film released this year. But then again, Fuqua never disappoints, so I'm not too surprised.
Gender: Male Location: Balls deep in your cerebral cortex
This movie was dope.
It's like they watched "Taken", took everything good about it, and wrapped it up in a neat little bow instead of dragging it out for two additional shit movies.
I didn't understand the point in McCall using his stopwatch?
One scene he predicts he can disarm/kill the bad guys in 16 (or pos 19) seconds...he checks his watch after to see that he was off.
Was it suppose to allude that he was getting slow, growing old?
Another scene when the bad guy visits his apartment, McCall times how long it takes him to return to his car...something that leads to nothing at all.
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Aug 4th, 2014 09:58 AM
