There’s a rote sense of sameness to “The Equalizer 2.” The original action/thriller four years ago starred Denzel Washington as an ex-CIA killer plying his skills for the benefit of random strangers -- the Good Samaritan with a heaping helping of chock-socky. It was (very) loosely based on the 1980s TV show, which starred a dapper Brit instead of a stern middle-aged black man.
If you liked the first one, you’ll probably find the second agreeable. There just aren’t many surprises or new revelations to recommend it.
Old guy. Who kicks ass. That’s the movie.
Every scene starts for the proposition of, “How could this frumpy guy bumping up against senior citizen status possibly take out multiple bad guys each decades his junior?” And then he does.
It’s fun for a while. The whole film is like a magician performing variations on the same trick, over and over again. At some point you get tired of seeing the hare come out of the hat and want them to saw a lady in half, or something.
Director Antoine Fuqua returns, having paired with Washington on a number of films now over nearly two decades. The star and the filmmaker seem to have an innate sense of each other’s rhythm, so we don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the inner workings of Robert McCall. Instead, we feel like we just know him.
He’s lonely, a bit bitter. Bad stuff has happened in his life -- chiefly the death of his wife, Vivian. But he puts on a brave face and encourages those around him to be the best version of themselves. Robert is presumed dead by the CIA, and appears to move around every few years to start a new life. Strangely, he never changes his name, and nobody ever comes looking for him.
In the last film he was a stockboy at a hardware wholesaler; this time he’s a driver for Lyft. He tools around Boston in a black Chevy Malibu, picking up and dropping off people, listening to their conversations and acting as a voyeur in their lives instead of living one of his own.
Occasionally he hears something distressing, and decides to help. In the opening sequence aboard a speeding train in Turkey, he takes on a villain who has kidnapped his own daughter from his American wife. Later, he faces off with some young Wall Street types who have used a stripper poorly and expect Robert to ferry away the problem.
On the side he’s also helping an elderly Jewish man (Orson Bean) track down a valuable painting of his sister that was stolen during the Holocaust. And mentoring Miles (Ashton Sanders), a black teenager bouncing between his affinity for art and running with the wrong crowd.
The meat of the central story doesn’t get rolling until the 45-minute mark, and when it does it’s not particularly interesting. A CIA asset in Belgium is killed along with his wife, and made to look like a murder/suicide. Then those responsible set about “tying up loose ends,” which appears to mean killing anyone even remotely involved with the affair. This leads to more loose ends, and so on. Jonathan Scarfe is effective as one of the chief bad guys, the type of who sneers while he kills.
Mellissa Leo plays Susan, a friend of Robert’s -- his only one, really -- who still works at the CIA and helps him out with info. Bill Pullman is her husband, a doddering academic. Pedro Pascal plays Dave, Robert’s old partner who’s surprised to find out he’s still alive.
Written by Richard Wenk, who also penned the first movie, “The Equalizer 2” contains a whole lot of hand-to-hand combat, yet when it comes to storytelling it telegraphs its punches like an over-the-hill fighter with a huge windup.
The audience figures out who the chief antagonist is long before Robert does. It’s never a good thing for a super spy to seem slow on the uptake.
#MeToo gets James Franco. After winning the Golden Globe, he's now persona non grata.
Martin McDonagh of "Three Billboards" shunted aside for cool kids, aka first-time directors Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig.
Strong showing in general for "Get Out," the most overrated film of the year.
It's rare for youngsters to get a Best Actor nomination in their first big role, so Daniel Kaluuya and Timothee Chalamat are surprises. Stronger contenders were out there.
Very surprised and happy to see Woody Harrelson to get a supporting actor nod for "Three Billboards." I much preferred him to Sam Rockwell (he was good, doing a caricature for most of the movie). The two will now compete for the prize.
Jessica Chastain gets no love, and "Molly's Game" in general fared poorly with just a script nomination.
The Indiana Film Journalists Association's screenplay award for "Logan" proves prescient. I'm tellin' ya, the IFJA should be a bigger part of the awards build-up fanfare!
Disappointed by lack of Best Pic nomination for "The Florida Project." Small film, but it got plenty of attention.
I think Denzel and Octavia could blow their noses and get nominations. They're like when aging NBA stars get voted into the All-Star game no matter how they played. Did anyone even see "Roman J. Israel, Esquire?"
A plum for Plummer. What a career-capper, to be a last-minute add to a big movie and steal the whole show.
I was reading one of those articles before the Oscars where a voting member anonymously reveals their ballot, and they were quoted as saying they didn’t put a lot of stock in “Fences” because “they just shot the play.”
Cow patties.
The reason “Fences” was one of the best films of 2016 was not just because of the excellence of the writing, for which August Wilson adapted his own play. Denzel Washington, Viola Davis and the rest of the excellent cast made those characters leap off the screen and into our hearts.
And Washington, stepping behind the camera to direct a film for just the second time, employed a host of camera and editing tools to make us feel like we were in the middle of the story, rather than squinting from the back row.
Part of Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle,” the story examines a blue-collar black family in the 1950s. Troy Maxson (Washington) is an aging cock of the walk, a former Negro League baseball player and thief who went straight to become a family man. He’s a garbage collector who has just agitated to become the first black city employee who doesn’t just pick up the cans but drives the truck.
It tells you something that Troy demanded the opportunity, despite not knowing how to drive.
David plays his devoted wife, Rose (Davis). Their relationship is strong, but one based upon Troy’s dominance over every aspect of their lives -- especially how the treat their teenage son, Cory (Jovan Adepo). He’s a football star with the prospect of a college scholarship, but Troy’s own crushed sports dreams and the racial divide color his reaction.
The rest of the cast is also spectacular, including Stephen Henderson, Russell Hornsby and Mykelti Williamson playing Troy’s best friend, older son from another relationship and disabled brother, respectively.
Wilson and Washington have supposedly made plans to film the other nine plays in the Pittsburgh Cycle. If so, they’re off to a magnificent start.
Video features are a mite on the light side. The DVD contains none at all. The Blu-ray boasts six making-of featurettes: “Expanding the Audience: From Stage to Screen,” “The Company of Fences,” “Building Fences: Denzel Washington,” “Playing the Part: Rose Maxson” and “August Wilson’s Hill District.”
I remember "Carbon Copy" as one of the first "grownup" movies I was allowed to see in the theaters. It's a film that's more notable for its place in cinematic history than the actual merits of the flick itself, though those are not inconsiderable.
Topping the list is the film debut of Denzel Washington. If you were to draw up a list of the greatest film actors of the past 30 years, here would be mine (in no order): Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, Anthony Hopkins, Denzel Washington. Oh, and Jeff Bridges... he's quieter than the rest, but no less deserving.
Washington gets the "...and introducing" treatment here at the end of the opening cast credits. It's not exactly an auspicious debut for someone of his stature, and the film has largely been forgotten today.
Mostly that's owing to its racial themes, which were mildly progressive for 1981 but seem hopelessly antiquated -- even a little insensitive -- for today. Not to mention that almost instantly obsolete title, a reference to an early form of document reproduction that I would guess few under age 40 even recognize.
Screenwriter Stanley Shapiro had a busy career for three decades, a comedic master who was nominated for the Oscar four times, winning once for 1960's "Pillow Talk." This was back in the day when the Academy wasn't shy about recognizing funny movies, unlike today.
(Unless it's comedy of the pitch-black variety, a la "About Schmidt" or "The Descendants.")
Shapiro's last feature film credit was the wonderful "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" in 1988. His screwball comedy roots and rapid-patter style of dialogue are evident in "Carbon Copy," a movie that always seems like it's in too much of a hurry. Scenes race to their conclusion like the spirit of Louis B. Mayer was sitting behind director Michael Schultz with a stopwatch.
Speaking of Schultz, he was a notable African-American director working in mainstream Hollywood for decades, with credits like "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "Car Wash" and a number of Richard Pryor comedies. Approaching age 80, he's still active in television today working on popular series like "Arrow" and "Black-ish."
Washington's character starts at the forefront of the story, and gradually gets pushed aside. "Carbon Copy" is really a star vehicle for George Segal, who plays Walter Whitney, a harried 41-year-old Los Angeles corporate executive squeezed from all sides by his shrew wife, Vivian (Susan Saint James), and his boss, Nelson (Jack Warden), who's also his father-in-law.
Then 17-year-old Roger Porter (Washington) shows up on is doorstep, claiming to be his son from a long-ago romance with an African-American woman. The setup is that Walter truly loved Roger's mother, but sold out to marry into money and the big time. Nelson insisted that Walter cover up the romance so as not to upset the WASP elite of San Marino, a tony suburb of L.A., as well as change his surname from Weisenthal to Whitney, for similar reasons.
Walter's not a bad guy, but he's reaping the whirlwind of bad life choices all coming back to haunt him at once.
The movie opens on an... uncomfortable note. Walter awakens Vivian with demands for sex, the result of long pent-up frustration, which grow increasingly strident, only to be dispelled when the maid walks in on them with a silver breakfast platter. Vivian even whips out the "r" word, and she quickly reports the whole episode to daddy, resulting in a talking-to from the old man.
Nelson is a real piece of work. He's an old-school sort who believes it's the duty of the rich and powerful to stay that way. But he's got his charms.
On the one hand, he wields the carrot of reminding Walter that he can become The Man one day if he follows the straight-and-narrow path, while also threatening the stick of blackmailing him about his black bastard son and Jewish heritage.
Nelson genuinely wants Walter to follow in his footsteps, even if he has to hammer his feet to a pulp to make the shoes fit. "Learn to trust unhappiness, Walter," he counsels.
Washington is a revelation from the moment we first lay eyes on him. Just 23 when the movie was shot, he's a lithe and charismatic presence from the get-go. He adopts the demeanor of a streetwise tough, waltzing into Walter's office and admiring all the trappings: big oak desk (soon adorned by Roger's feet), three-piece suits, expense account lunches, Rolls Royce company car, etc. He makes out like he's looking for a payday.
In the end, it's revealed that Roger is actually a smart, hard-working kid who graduated from high school early and is already in his second year of pre-med at college. He just wanted to meet his old man, take his measure and see what happens next. Part of him would take great delight in seeing his world unravel -- which is exactly what happens. But he finds himself burdened with a growing fondness for Walter.
Questions of parentage are quickly set aside for storytelling convenience -- despite the only ostensible proof of progeny being some old letters of his mother's Roger found after her death. (Speaking of which: for someone who just lost his mom, he doesn't seem very broken up about it.)
The movie doesn't take time to really explore how a middle-aged guy like Walter feels about having a black son, moving right into screwball comedy territory. First he introduces Roger to Vivian as their summer guest as part of a program for underprivileged kids, after convincing her that all the other rich wives of San Marino will want "one" -- and she'll be the first.
Mere minutes into this new arrangement, however, Walter corners his wife with a hypothetical about accepting Roger if he were his "natural" son, just as he has (grudgingly) accepted and adopted her daughter from a previous marriage, a spoiled brat of the first order. When she takes the bait and Walter reveals that Roger really is his son, everything falls apart quickly.
He's thrown out of the house, loses his job, has his Rolls impounded and all his credit cards cut up, his assets frozen, etc. His oldest friend and attorney (Dick Martin) even drops him as a client to represent Vivian in the divorce. The lawyer he refers him to -- of course a black guy, played by Paul Winfield -- tells Walter all he's got in the world is whatever he has in his wallet, some 62 dollars.
He explains to Walter that he's being forcibly put through "social menopause:" "You're going through a change of color, Mr. Whitney. You don't want to play the game as a white man, so they're going to let you watch it as a black man."
That's of course going too far. Being a penniless, socially outcast white man in 1981 was still preferable to most iterations of black life of that era. Read a certain way, the film is a cautionary tale during the early days of Reagan.
Anyway, Walter and Roger suffer the life of paupers -- for a few days. He can't get a job after being blacklisted, so he takes to day labor cleaning out horse stalls (still wearing his three-piece to the gig). This leads him to reflect upon his new life of shit, and the resolve it brings. "I'll shovel it. I'll live in it. But I won't take it."
Meanwhile, Roger pawns his golf clubs and other stuff for cash to get them by another day. He also reveals that he has a car of his own that he bought for "$14 and a toaster," which is a comically battered 1959 or '60 Chevrolet Bel Air, the front end mangled and one tire wobbling like a dancing hippo.
"Carbon Copy" takes the issue of divisions between black and white and between rich and poor and turns it into a prank, a springboard for laughs rather than social observation. For example, there's a scene where Walter, desperate for cash, challenges an out-of-shape father and son to a game of basketball for five bucks, thinking he's got a ringer because every black kid can play hoops, right? And of course Roger turns out to be completely inept, sailing the ball eight feet over the backboard.
We're never quite certain of how deeply the film is in on its own joke. Is that scene funny because of Walter's presumptions about black athletes, or our own? Are we laughing at the African-American who can't shoot a basketball, or at Walter for assuming that he could?
Thank God, at least the movie doesn't have a dancing scene.
I can't quite bring myself to dislike "Carbon Copy," however. The dialogue is still snappy even if the plot feels like it's hopped up on speed. And the cast is a pure pleasure: the folksy, slightly neurotic charm of George Segal, and young Denzel Washington feeling his oats on the big screen.
In general I’m not a fan of most stage-to-screen adaptations. The mediums are lot more different than people think, and the stitch marks show too glaringly from the conversion process. Like the way the action is largely confined to one or two places, the cast is artificially small, and people have that weird habit of walking a few steps away, but the other characters continue the conversation as if they can’t be heard.
But “Fences,” directed and starring Denzel Washington from a screenplay adaptation that August Wilson did himself, is an absolute triumph. It’s a deeply affecting portrait of African-American lives in 1950s Pittsburgh, with the patriarch of a small family raging against injustice and the life that has left him feeling shackled.
Part of Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle,” “Fences” is the first in what Washington has declared will be screen versions of all 10 plays. If the first is any indication, we’re about to see one of the most ambitious undertakings in cinematic history.
Certainly, “Fences” belongs on any list of the best films of 2016.
The story takes place mostly in the kitchen and cramped back yard of Troy and Rose Maxson. He’s a garbage man and she’s a housewife, living in a tidy but poor section of Pittsburgh. They’ve been married 18 years and have a son in high school, Cory (an impressive Jovan Adepo), who is a star player on the football team and has an offer to play on a scholarship in college.
Troy, though, is both a product and a rebel of his time. He had a wild youth, living as a thief and fathering another boy, Lyons (Russell Hornsby), by another woman. He gave it all up long ago to be a garbage collector, because it was a safe and stable existence. But now he’s agitating for a promotion to driver of the garbage truck, something no other “coloreds” are allowed to do.
Troy was also a star baseball player prior to integration of the sport at the professional level, and doesn’t want to see Cory go through the same disappointment that he did. The fierce nature of his love unfortunately translates into ogreish behavior that pushes the boy away, and starts a growing rift with Rose.
Over the course of the story, Troy works (in fits and starts) on building a fence in his back yard, for reasons that are apparent only to himself. I suspect it’s because Troy is a man who has a firm grasp on his own identity, and knows what things he wants to keep in his life and what he wants to keep out. His tragic flaw is the delusion that he has control over these things.
Most of the rest of the cast are carryovers from the recent Broadway stage revival. Stephen Henderson is a revelation as Bono, Troy’s coworker and best friend. Henderson takes would could have been a typical wingman role and gives Bono all sorts of depths and shades. He loves Troy and Rose, so much that he can’t stand when they begin to tear each other up. Bono is endlessly supportive but not an enabler.
Rounding out the cast is Mykelti Williamson as Gabriel, Troy’s younger brother who was left mentally shattered after being wounded during World War II. As the story opens, Gabriel has been living with Troy and Rose -- indeed, his disability checks helped buy the house -- but recently moved out to his own place. Carrying a trumpet he can’t play and a tattered vestige of his manhood, Gabriel is a pitiable symbol.
“Fences” sticks close to the play in terms of character, story and dialogue. Washington employs some subtle but effective director’s tricks to open things up, such as having the camera slowly rotate around a small knot of people having a conversation.
Washington and Davis both give powerful, Oscar-worthy turns, and the supporting cast hits all its notes squarely and true. This is the rare stage play that only grows in impact when it’s given a little more room to flourish.
There’s not a lot that’s quite magnificent about “The Magnificent Seven,” though there is plenty to like. It’s got great actions scenes, twinkly anti-heroes, scornful villains, memorable supporting characters and lots of eye candy.
What it doesn’t have is any reason for existing. A remake of the seminal 1960s Western, which itself was based on Akira Kurosawa’s landmark “Seven Samurai,” this film is essentially a PG-13 nostalgia romp for its own sake.
Still, what’s not to like about Denzel Washington as creased, calculating bounty hunter Sam Chisolm? Or Chris Pratt as wise-cracking gambler/shootist Josh Faraday? Add in Ethan Hawke as a genteel Civil War legend/sharpshooter, Vincent D’Onofrio as a weirdly amusing mountain man/lunatic and a passel of other wayward cowpokes, and you’ve got yourself a movie.
You know the story: evil power-monger (in this case, Peter Sarsgaard’s sneering cattle baron) puts his boot on the collective neck of a town of farmers, who decide to hire their own gunslingers to protect them. Our seven heroes are mercilessly outnumbered, but with a little luck and some careful planning, they make a battle of it.
Director Antoine Fuqua, who’s made some stellar movies with Washington, and screenwriters Richard Wenk and Nic Pizzolatto don’t try to fancy things up beyond the essentials: stand-offs, wisecracks, a few lightly scary moments, a noble sacrifice or two. The last third of the movie is essentially one long action scene, and it’s harrowing stuff.
This film surely won’t be immortalized like the original was. But “The Magnificent Seven” has a job to do, and does it with skill.
Bonus features are decent if not especially expansive. The DVD edition comes with four making-of featurette documentaries. Upgrade to the Blu-ray version, and you add two more plus several deleted scenes.
The Blu-ray’s highlight is a “Vengeance Mode,” where you can watch the movie with key scenes broken down with comments from the director and cast.
“The Magnificent Seven” is a thoroughly enjoyable Western shoot-em-up that really has no purpose for existing. It’s a remake of the 1960 classic that itself is an Americanized version of a greater film, Japan’s “Seven Samurai.” But the basic tale has even deeper roots: a band of castoffs and deplorable is thrown together for a noble purpose in service to something greater than themselves.
So we watch this iteration of the familiar folklore, knowing full well what’s going to go down. There are no surprises to be unearthed, only admiration for the craftsmanship of the filmmakers and some finely drawn characters courtesy of the cast.
This is not the first rodeo together for director Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington (“Training Day”), and their films always seem to have a hum of energy about them. There are no dull patches, though we don’t delve into the backstories of the seven gunmen too much, or the villain who besets them.
It is 1879 in the tiny mining town of Rose Creek somewhere in California. The opener is a slam-banger in which sneering robber baron Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) kills most of the tougher men in town and demands the rest of the farmers leave in exchange for $20 apiece for their plots. Sargaard brings a sort of feral sickliness to the man, a bit of Biblical brimstone married to some notions about capitalism that even Ayn Rand would find overly harsh.
It’s all designed to make us hate Bogue and his army of faceless mercenaries, and it does.
Haley Bennett plays Emma Cullen, wife to one of the murdered who takes it upon herself to find some hard men of their own to stand up to Bogue. The first she recruits is Sam Chisolm (Washington), who demonstrates his affinity with the six-shooter by waltzing into a saloon and taking out half the local miscreants.
Washington is obviously having fun with this role, the bounty hunter of dark deeds who carries a carefully hidden chip on his shoulder. Outfitted in black garb, black hat and black horse, he carries a classic sense of righteousness and a modern undertone of grievance. The scene where Chisolm emerges from the saloon with hands in the air while half the town has their guns on him, the only black man around, speaks silent volumes.
Next up is Josh Faraday, a smirking gambler played by Chris Pratt. He’s a self-described ladies’ man whom all the women turn their noses up at, though he’s fast with a gun and card tricks. I kept waiting for the movie to peel back more layers on him, but it never happens. Pratt gets a lot of the best one-liners, and milks them well.
The rest sort of blur together, as the movie hurries through the recruitment phase to get to the showdown.
Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke) is a marksman whose accuracy made him a legend during the Civil War, but now the genteel Southerner seems to get by more on bluster than bullseyes. “Fame is a sarcophagus,” he opines over his whiskey, and he is overly fond of both his drink and his own voice.
His partner is Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), an Asian assassin of indeterminate origin who’s equally adept with guns and blades. Apparently Goodnight and Billy made some sort of pact to protect each other’s secrets, but they protect them too well.
Vincet D’Onofrio is an oddball bearcat of a mountain man, Jack Horne, a lonely former scalp-hunter who warbles in a high-pitched voice, saying nonsensical things that bemuse and befuddle his compatriots. He seems more than slightly teched, killing brutally but always seeking assurance that he is justified in doing so.
Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Martin Sensmeier are Vasquez and Red Harvest, rather generic warrior types of Mexican and Comanche heritage, respectively. Red Harvest at least gets some titular war paint to make him distinctive. Bogue has himself an evil Indian, so we just know it’s going to come down to a standoff with our good Indian.
The gunfight takes up almost the second half of the movie, and that’s the main attraction. It’s an orgy of choreographed PG-13-rated violence, in which blood flows after someone is shot but never spatters on impact. Our seven heroes manage to seem incredibly skilled but not superhuman. One guy gets shot full of arrows (bad Indian!) and we think he’s going to keep on coming, but… well, you’ll see.
If it’s possible to like a movie without really admiring it, that’s my take on “The Magnificent Seven.” I think the time and energy of cast and crew would’ve been better spent making any sort of original movie instead of remaking a remake. But the picture shoots straight.
“The Equalizer” falls into that category of films that I call, “I’m not really sure they needed to make that, but the movie they did make isn’t bad at all.”
Like the recent Spider-Man reboot, remaking a cheesy 1980s TV show about an over-the-hill spy who helps everyday people doesn’t seem like a very intuitive move. But Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua, who previously teamed up successfully on “Training Day,” manage to create an engaging story and character that use the show as a mere jumping-off point.
Robert McCall (Washington) is an older man who works a drone job at a big-box store, keeps his apartment compulsively clean, reads books and visits the same diner at 2 a.m. every day. He can also kill you in two seconds with his bare hands, if he’s so inclined.
Because he’s an old, somewhat schlumpy guy, his opponents don’t even see him as a threat. A couple of jump cuts later, and suddenly they’re lying on the ground, oozing blood.
After a young prostitute (Chloë Grace Moretz) he’s befriended is treated shabbily by her Russian pimp, Robert steps in to help out. He easily dispatches an entire roomful of hoods, thus setting off a chain reaction of ever-escalating violence. Soon a sadistic fixer from the motherland is dispatched to take of things personally.
“The Equalizer” is basically a dumb movie, smartly made. It won’t win any awards for originality, but Denzel Washington is still really good at playing a badass.
Bonus features are rather decent, though you have to spring for the Blu-ray edition to get the best stuff. The DVD only has two featurettes: one focuses on the climactic showdown at the fictional Home Mart, and the other is about Moretz’ character.
The Blu-ray adds a gallery of production still photos, and four more featurettes. They focus on stunts, Washington’s combat training for the role, Fuqua’s vision and adapting an old TV show into a modern action movie. There’s also a “Vengeance Mode” featuring some of the nastiest fight clips.
I know what you're thinking: Denzel Washington in a remake of the cheesy 1980s TV show, "The Equalizer," about an over-the-hill secret agent who helps out people in need?!? Our Denzel? Who's been a prime model of cinematic masculinity for ... well, a heck of a long time, actually. Still, why is he doing old-man roles?
I hate to break it to you, but Washington will be 60 in a few months. Sixty. Which makes him five years younger than Edward Woodward was when the show debuted in 1985.
In retrospect, the TV series was prescient about introducing a subgenre of filmmaking that's become quite prevalent today: the Geezer Spy Thriller. We've seen any number of aging big-name actors take to the field as late-in-life action stars, with Liam Neeson ("Taken") and Kevin Costner ("Three Days to Kill") among them.
The basic premise of these movies is the man, always a loner, always with a mysterious past, though there's pain and violence there, usually involving secret agent work for some shadowy governmental arm. He thinks he's given up that life of dark deeds, but circumstances and/or an inability to look away from evil prompt him to apply his deadly skills against a coterie of bad guys.
The tough young punks all dismiss him because he's old, aka less than a man, but he soon puts them in their places -- specifically, lying on the floor in a pool of their own blood.
Washington plays Robert McCall very close to the vest. He is defined by his stillness and passivity, at least until he springs into action. Bob works at Home Mart, a big-box hardware store a la Lowes or Home Depot, where he stocks shelves and pushes around dollies loaded with bags and such, and takes a good-natured ribbing from the younger employees. His apartment is tidy to the point of OCD, and is filled with classic literature books that he's making his way through.
Bob is very aware of the passage of time. He uses his watch to time most everything he does, from getting ready in the morning to taking out an entire room of armed bad guys bare-handed. Bob does most everything sans weapons; I can only recall him wielding a firearm one time in the entire movie. Mostly, he lures his prey in close, putting them at ease with his frumpy appearance and non-threatening demeanor, and then strikes like a cobra.
To say that he "fights" his opponents is to suggest that they ever have a chance of getting an upper hand on him. Most encounters are over in less than two seconds. Even his chief nemesis, an enforcer for the Russian mafia named Teddy, is clearly not his equal in hand-to-hand combat skills. He's played deliciously by Marton Csokas, ever so slithery and brutal. With his slicked-down hair and slimy manner, he practically seems to be secreting toxic oils through his epidermis.
Things come to a head when Bob defends a young prostitute (Chloe Grace Moretz) he's grown friendly with. A non-sleeper, he visits the same diner every night around 2 a.m., bringing his own tea packet carefully wrapped in a handkerchief; like him, she's one of the regulars. She dreams of getting out from under her abusive Russian pimp, Slavi (David Meunier), and becoming a singer, but she's beaten to a pulp for her transgressions. Bob offers to buy her freedom, but Slavi is disinclined, and the bloodletting ensues.
This brings in a succession of ever-higher-ranking Russians to deal with the situation, and a subsequent rising body count.
Director Antoine Fuqua previously partnered with Washington very successfully in 2001's "Training Day," which won him his second acting Oscar. The two seem to intuitively get each other, as Washington's performance is fully vested with emotional and dramatic power. In lesser hands, this would probably seem like exploitative dreck, but cast and crew elevate the material to unexpectedly hefty heights.
Bob never seems like a mere killing machine, but a complex man with a simple outward facade. He takes no joy in slaying -- unlike the sadomasochistic Teddy -- but is not shy about putting his skillset to good (bad) use.
Fuqua's action scenes have a tendency to go a little over the top ... and then they go a little more. He uses slow-motion effects in the middle of the mayhem to an almost interminable degree. There's only so much one can take of water drops beading slowly off the brow of our hero, or him striding purposefully away from an explosion, contemptuous of the shockwave and debris.
A little slo-mo goes a long way, bro.
Screenwriter Richard Wenk makes the wise choice of only using the television show as a mere springboard to tell their own story. Bob, with his slouchy colorless clothes and brusque manner, bears no resemblance at all to the clipped British lilt, natty suits and trench coats of TV.
Despite some occasional bouts of silliness owing to taking itself too seriously, "The Equalizer" is a surprisingly effective psychological thriller, featuring a gruff but relatable hero and some eminently hiss-able villains. Liam Neeson may currently be king of the Geezer Spy genre, but Denzel Washing may just be the man to knock him off the throne.
“Flight” is one of those
movies that keeps throwing you for loops. Some of the loops are
satisfying, while others just leave you discombobulated. The overall
experience is worthwhile, even though I often found myself having
difficulty getting emotionally invested in what was going on.
Denzel
Washington plays “Whip” Whitaker, a veteran airline pilot with a
substance abuse problem. He drinks like a fish, snorts cocaine and
carouses with a flight attendant mere hours before climbing into the
cockpit.
Once he’s in the captain’s chair, though, Whip is all
business – seasoned, cocksure and steady. In fact, when the plane
suffers a serious mechanical failure, he performs a virtually impossible
maneuver to land the plane, saving over 100 lives. He’s lauded as a
national hero.
But when an investigation reveals that he was
stoned at the time, Whip retreats into a cocoon of self-loathing.
Outwardly confident, he rebuffs attempts from the pilot union chief
(Bruce Greenwood) and their power lawyer (Don Cheadle) to assist. He
falls in with Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a heroin addict decades his junior,
as they help shore up each other’s crumbling identities.
Things
slowly build to a big government hearing to assign blame for the crash.
Will Whip be lauded or reviled? “Flight” is less about one man’s public
journey from hero to reprobate than his descent into himself.
Extra
features are on the slim side, especially if you opt for the DVD
edition. It comes with ... exactly nothing. No goodies at all.
Upgrade
to the Blu-ray, and you do get three featurettes on the making of the
film, including a blow-by-blow account of how the stomach-churning crash
sequence was created. There are also a few Q&As with the cast
and crew.
In his long career Denzel Washington has played a lot of good guys, and a few notable bad ones, but I'm not sure if he's ever played a guy like the one in "Flight."
The story is about a pilot who saves a jet full of passengers when his plane suffers a major malfunction. But in the days that come after the crash, questions arise that throw his heroism, and even his entire self-conception, into chaos.
William "Whip" Whitaker is a puzzle, a mystery wrapped in a cocoon of bravado and patter. He's been fooling everyone else for so long that he's even convinced himself that he fits his role to a T: that of the savvy, calm, cool and collected airline pilot. The image he projects is of a former Navy fighter pilot hot dog turned safe and seasoned commercial captain of the airwaves.
But Whip's got a secret. He drinks. A lot. Does a little coke, too, to bring himself up after the buckets of booze have worn him down. But once he's in the pilot's seat, he reasons, he's all business.
Except that one fateful day something on the plane breaks, and Whip and his green co-pilot (Brian Geraghty) are forced to undertake a risky crash-landing maneuver. The upshot: a lot of people are hurt, but only six out of 102 are killed. People are calling it a miracle. The media is buzzing. In simulated recreations, no other pilot is able to replicate Whip's daring deed.
And yet, the blood tests say he was legally drunk when he did this.
From there, the story takes on an unsteady rhythm, as the narrative meanders here and pools there. The original script by John Gatins goes in directions we don't expect; some of them pay off, and others don't.
Whip is confronted by federal investigators, as well as the friendly head of the pilot's union (Bruce Greenwood) and the slick lawyer they've retained (Don Cheadle). Their job, they say, is to protect Whip. But the odds are dire -- he could end up lauded as a hero, another Sully Sullenberger, or put in jail forever.
His first reaction is like the rest of his life up to now: bluster. No one else could have landed that plan and saved those lives like I did, he proclaims. To him it makes no difference if he was legally impaired at the time, since obviously the booze and drugs didn't affect him enough to prevent him from amazing actions.
But slowly Whip descends into a torpor, hiding out at his grandfather's abandoned farm, swilling astonishing amounts of liquor. We get the sense we're seeing the real man Whip hides from the world, one who's self-pitying, arrogant and not a little pathetic.
In the hospital he meets Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a woman who overdosed on heroin. Her life is falling apart in much the same way as Whip's. Seeing a kindred soul in need, he gives her a place to stay when her money runs out. It's an unspoken but mutually understood arrangement that she will give herself physically to him as a reward.
Things build, slowly, to the big hearing before the National Transportation Safety Board. Will Whip straighten himself up in time to put on a convincing show? Can his lawyer get the toxicology report thrown out?
As it turns out, the movie is not really about these things. Rather, it's an exploration of a man's fragile psyche, and if he can recognize the failings underneath his brave veneer of competence.
This is the first live-action movie Robert Zemeckis has directed since 2000's "Cast Away," after an often regrettable decade exploring motion-capture animation. In many ways "Flight" is a return to familiar ground. Instead of being physically isolated, Whip is marooned emotionally. The trick to getting out of his trap is peering deep into his own self-reflection.
It's an engaging picture, and not for a moment was I ever bored. But I never quite got viscerally hooked into Whip's dilemma, or felt like we ever get to really know him. As hard as it is for him to reach out for help, we never quite get a grip on him.
"Safe House" has a lot going for it, and a few bad things that don't spoil the ride.
It's a slick, plot-driven thriller about the nasty underside of the spy game. It's got Denzel Washington doing his smooth-talking thing, playing the man of quiet confidence who doesn't feel a need to broadcast his exceptional skills to the world. His actions speak louder than.
The action scenes, especially the car chases and hand-to-hand fisticuffs, are crisp and well-staged. And the supporting cast is top-notch, including Vera Farmiga, Brenda Gleeson and Sam Shepard, not to mention Ryan Reynolds, who for once is not doing that smarmy cad with the heart of gold thing.
Some of the plot twists aren't twisty enough to prevent the audience from seeing them coming a ways off, and the movie's villain might as well be walking around with an 'X' on their head. But still, it's an undeniably engaging piece of entertainment, a bit of sweet cinematic candy with a little salt to it.
Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a junior CIA agent with the worst posting possible: babysitting a safe house in Capetown, South Africa. These are the sort of places the spooks bring bad guys when they want to do things while the international community isn't watching. But Capetown is a sleepy burg, and Matt yearns for bigger things.
He gets his chance when a present arrives on his doorstep: none other than Tobin Frost, a living legend in the international espionage community. Tobin was once a top CIA agent himself, until he went rogue a decade ago.
Now he's got something really valuable, a computer file with Very Important Secrets. It's a classic MacGuffin -- nobody really knows what it is, but everyone wants it. Soon the safe house has been breached by bad guys, and it's up to Matt to bring Tobin in all by himself.
Tobin is one cool cat. When the goon squad threatens to waterboard him, he calmly informs them they're using the wrong thread of cloth to cover his face, then brags that he can last longer than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who managed 20 seconds. (A bit of Hollywood hoopla; Mohammed was reportedly waterboarded 183 times.)
Gleeson, the wonderful Irish actor, falls down while attempting an American accent -- no black mark there, since every U.K. thespian from Anthony Hopkins to Kate Winslet has punted in that regard. (The only truly good one I've heard, by which I mean I couldn't even detect the effort, was Aaron Johnson in "Kick-Ass.") He plays Barlow, a senior agency man and Matt's mentor.
Farmiga is Linklater, an ambitious rival of Barlow's who views Matt as an untested liability. Ruben Blades turns up as an old associate of Tobin, and Robert Patrick has a weary, professional air as the chief of the goon squad, tasked with doing stuff that isn't very pretty.
The interplay between the wily old Tobin and the inexperienced Matt is rather predictable, but is often delicious. Robin lectures and berates Matt like Hannibal Lecter toying with Clarice Starling, offering sage advice one minute and trying to rip his throat out the next.
"Unstoppable" is an exercise in lean, efficient storytelling. This tale about a runaway train and the two men who set out to stop it won't win any awards for originality or sophistication. But as a straightforward story about workaday guys who become heroes, its nimbleness is unassailable.
Denzel Washington plays Frank Barnes, a veteran train engineer who, along with a bunch of other old-timers, is about to be forcibly retired by the company in favor of youngsters like Will Colson (Chris Pine). To add insult to injury, Frank's been assigned to train Will -- speeding up his own obsolescence.
Both have static in their private lives that intrudes on their work. Will's just had a major dust-up with his wife, leading to a separation and court appearance, while Frank, a widower, is laboring to stay connected with his quickly maturing teen daughters. Neither has much patience for guff their new partner.
Their simmering old-vs.-young enmity gets put on the back burner when a train containing explosive chemicals becomes a runaway, threatening to wipe out an entire city. Will and Frank first must dodge the speeding juggernaut, and then chase it down and stop it.
Screenwriter Mark Bomback and director Tony Scott know how to hit the action beats for maximum visceral impact, and how to capitalize off Washington's considerable onscreen magnetism. Frank's a bit gruff and grizzled, but audiences instinctively root for him.
Throw in a half-dozen distinctive supporting characters -- Rosario Dawson shines as the sensible dispatcher back at HQ, as does Lew Temple as an offbeat man-in-the-field -- and "Unstoppable" becomes an unspectacular but undeniably entertaining flick.
Like the movie itself, video extras are solid but not extravagant.
The DVD comes with a commentary track by Scott and "Tracking the Story," a featurette about script development.
On top of these, the Blu-ray also comes with several other features, including an anatomy of a derailment scene, stunt work, cast and crew comments and so on.
I enjoyed "Unstoppable" much more than I thought I would. It's a slick, efficient thriller built around the enormously charismatic screen presence of Denzel Washington. It doesn't set any standards for originality and is about as subtle as a sledgehammer -- or a runaway train.
But as popcorn-munching entertainment, its proficiency is undeniable.
Washington plays Frank Barnes, a 28-year veteran railroad engineer. Frank is a prototypical Washington protagonist: He's good at what he does but doesn't flaunt it. He's friendly without being obsequious, and doesn't take guff from anyone. A widower, Frank loves his two teen daughters, and pretends that their working at Hooters doesn't bother him.
When Will Colson (Chris Pine) presents himself as his new trainee, Frank is all business: "If you don't know something, ask me." He goes about showing Will the ropes without animosity, even though the company is in the process of putting old-timers like him out to pasture and replacing them with whippersnappers like Will.
Each man has some static in his personal life. Will is currently separated from his wife and son, and there's even something about a court hearing and a restraining order. Meanwhile, Frank has forgotten his daughter's birthday, and is getting the cold shoulder from her.
When a careless rail yard worker (Ethan Suplee) lets a train get away unmanned, it sets off a chain reaction of events, building to a statewide emergency. It turns out the train, dubbed "Triple-7," is loaded with some nasty chemicals that could destroy an entire town. Frank and Will at first are on a collision course, and then volunteer themselves to stop the runaway.
The secondary characters present themselves as distinct and colorful. Connie (Rosario Dawson) is the dispatcher back at headquarters who acts as the voice of reason. Kevin Dunn is Gavin, the corporate honcho who plays the heavy, failing to listen to the people in the field who know what they're doing. Kevin Corrigan plays Werner, an inspector who was supposed to give a presentation to some school kids but instead adds his encyclopedic knowledge to the rescue effort.
I especially liked Lew Temple as Ned, an odd railroad worker who's sort of the X factor, blazing around in his huge red truck. Ned's the type of guy totally lacking in social skills, who bores people to death talking about the technical details of his job, but you want him around in a crisis.
This is the fourth movie director Tony Scott and Washington have made together, and the second in a row after another train movie, "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3." Scott's an old, expert hand at this sort of adrenaline-fueled material, and knows just how to hit the action beats for maximum impact.
The original screenplay by Mark Bomback is an exercise in lean storytelling: Just enough detail and background to give the main characters some layers, but jettisoning anything that detracts from the boiling plot.
The movie is loosely based on the "Crazy Eights" train incident from 2001. Interestingly, that happened in Ohio, while "Unstoppable" is set in Pennsylvania -- but was filmed largely in the Buckeye State.
"Unstoppable" is evocative of the economically depressed Midwest, and celebrates the type of no-nonsense blue-collar manhood that's been hardest hit by the Great Recession. It's an engaging action/thriller in which no one pulls out a gun or throws a punch, and that's something.
“The Book of Eli” may just be the best-looking dumb movie ever made.
This post-apocalyptic drama from the Hughes brothers directing duo (Allen and Albert) features a wasteland so bleak and bled of color, the film is nearly monochromatic. Its spareness is practically sumptuous.
But the script (by Gary Whitta) is filled with so much idiocy and silliness, we grow distracted from all the great visuals.
The setup is part “Mad Max,” part “Waterworld” (sans water), part “Fallout” video game, and 100 percent bone-headed.
Denzel Washington plays the title character, a wandering badass who possesses the last Holy Bible on Earth. Most of humanity was wiped out 30 years ago, and the few that are left roam the desert preying on each other, or gather into chaotic enclaves.
Eli strolls into one of the latter, a town led by an intelligent, diabolical man named Carnegie (Gary Oldman), who sees in the Bible a weapon with which he can tie the rabble to his yoke.
The last two-thirds of the movie devolves into a series of chases and fights as Carnegie's men seek to wrest the book from Eli's grasp. Eli, armed with a freaky-looking machete and preternaturally fast moves, filets them to bits.
It's a cool, withered world the Hugheses have painted for us. And I’m a sucker for stories about mankind squabbling over the flotsam of their dead society.
But don't be fooled by its great looks: “The Book of Eli” is so stupid, it’s almost unholy.
Video extras are spare for DVD, but terrific in the Blu-ray version.
The DVD has four brief deleted or alternate scenes, and a 5-minute animated comic book story about Carnegie's origins.
In addition, the Blu-ray edition has a pop-up commentary track by the Hughes brothers, which you can pause to watch an additional 34 minutes of "Focus Points" covering all levels of production.
I found it fascinating that the Hugheses commissioned a complete graphic novel version of the story before filming began.
There's also a featurette on the soundtrack, a digital copy of the film, and two documentaries totaling 30 minutes that explore the spiritual implications of Eli's world and mission.
"The Book of Eli" may just be the best-looking dumb movie ever made.
I mean it: The Hughes Brothers (Albert and Allen) deliver a post-apocalyptic landscape that's bleak and gritty and so washed out of color, the movie is practically in black-and-white. Cinematographer Don Burgess, an Oscar nominee for "Forrest Gump," delivers a masterfully crafted visual banquet; its spareness is practically sumptuous.
I also mean it about the stupidity -- the Hughes boys and rookie screenwriter Gary Whitta pair these wonderful visuals with a story so nonsensical and silly, it's at least 20 I.Q. points slower than Forrest.
The setup is part "Mad Max," part "Waterworld" (sans water), part "Fallout" video game, and 100 percent bone-headed.
Denzel Washington plays the title character, a wandering badass who's been walking westward ever since nuclear war annihilated most of humanity 30 years ago. (I feel compelled to point out he must be the slowest walker ever -- even if he only hiked 10 miles a day, he could have traversed all of America dozens of times in that span.)
He carries many weapons, including firearms and a bow, but favors a freaky-looking sword that he uses to cut off the hand of a highway bandit who dares touch him in the film's opening minutes. After the rest of his gang has been messily killed, the ruffian reaches for his severed appendage, which Eli kicks out of reach. "I told you you weren't going to get that back," he says.
Clearly a bad dude, right? So perhaps it comes as a shock to learn that Eli is, in fact, a holy man. He's carrying the last Holy Bible on Earth, he says (how does he know that?). He reads it every night, and likes to quote scripture as he's filleting his enemies. But he doesn't seem to live by its precepts very much -- certainly not the turn the other cheek stuff.
Still, it's a pretty cool world that's been painted for us. I'm a sucker for stories about mankind squabbling over the flotsam of their dead society. "We threw things away that people kill each other over now," Eli observes.
But then things get screwy.
Eli wanders into a town run by a boss named Carnegie (Gary Oldman), who's been sending his road gangs out to search for a Bible. It seems in the aftermath of the war, there was a concerted effort (by whom, it's never stated) to burn all the Bibles. Carnegie, a schemer who rules through his wits rather than his muscle, figures to use the holy words as a "weapon" with which he can gather people to him and thereby gain power.
Now, if Carnegie is smart enough to realize religion can be used for nefarious purposes, why does he need a Bible? He could just dream up his own religion, inventing whatever rules and commandments he wanted to suit his purposes, and achieve exactly the same effect. Since Eli has the only Bible, who's to contest Carnegie's version of scripture?
But no, once Carnegie learns that Eli has a Bible, he sends hordes of men with guns after him to procure it.
Eli himself is a little more circumspect about his purposes. All he will say is that he's walking westward until he finds a place where the book is needed. Even Solara, a town girl who tags along with Eli, can't get much more information out of him than that, although he does teach her to say grace before meals. Solara is played by Mila Kunis, who has a knack for comedy but should step away from dramatic material -- she's just this side of awful in this movie.
I don't want to give away too much about the plot, other than to say when Eli's final destination is revealed, one realizes that all of Carnegie's sacrifices have been for naught. He could have just waited in his town until the Bible came back to him.
The film's other idiocies are multitudinous. For example, there's a little ritual the people in town do to prove they're not cannibals: Making others hold up their hands to see if they shake. Eating too much human meat, you see, causes one to have tremors. Eli and Solara learn this for certain when they stumble upon a seemingly nice old couple in the wasteland who have lots of guns and lots of shakes. I guess it sounds neat, until one wonders what biophysical effect one could possibly have from eating human flesh, other than anorexia.
Speaking of which -- for a setting in which everyone is constantly scrapping for food and water, Denzel Washington and the rest of the cast look suspiciously well-fed. I would think double-chins and bellies would be a rarity in the after-apocalypse. Only Oldman looks sufficiently gaunt and withered to belong to the wasteland.
And that's not even getting into the film's metaphysical posturing. The Hughes boys seem to suggest that there is actually something supernatural at work here, particularly with Eli's preternaturally fast combat moves. At one point he takes out a whole gang of men with rifles using only a pistol, which seems to hold an infinite amount of bullets.
But don't be fooled by its great looks: "The Book of Eli" is so stupid, it's almost unholy.
A better-than-average potboiler, "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" pairs two veteran actors, John Travolta and Denzel Washington, as a psychotic criminal looking to take the Big Apple down a notch and the public servant tasked with foiling him.
What's most interesting about this flick is that director Tony Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland manage to make both the protagonist and antagonist equally charismatic. Ryder (Travolta, in a handlebar mustache and neck tattoo), recently released from prison for embezzlement, wants to make a wad of dough by holding a train full of subway passengers hostage in exchange for $10 million, while teaching an abject lesson in humility.
Garber (Washington) is a Joe Schmoe transit dispatcher who just happens to be the guy who takes Ryder's call, and ends up forming a rapport with the killer. He's competent, forthright, and puts his own neck on the line while the politicians dither, so the audience naturally roots for him.
"Pelham" is a remake of a 1974 film starring Robert Shaw as the heavy and Walter Matthau (!) as Garber. Scott and his cast and crew retain that film's gritty urban vibe while offering a stylish update.
DVD extras are ample and impressive. Washington and Travolta don't do a commentary track, but are well represented in other features. Commentary duties are left to Scott on his own track, and Helgeland and producer Todd Black on the other.
A 30-minute making-of documentary offers plenty of behind-the-scenes insight, including the fact that the guy playing Travolta's loud-mouth henchman was a real-life Albanian mobster.
There's also a 16-minute featurette about the extensive participation of the New York transit system in shutting down subway lines for filming. Also several theatrical trailers, and a 5-minute featurette about Scott working with a hairstylist to get his actors' look just right.
In addition to these extras, the Blu-ray version also comes with a digital copy of the film.
The remake of "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" manages a curious thing: A hostage standoff in which the audiences identifies with both the criminal and the representative of order whose job it is to take him down.
John Travolta plays the subway terrorist, who icily executes hostages while spewing some wild babble about getting revenge on the city of New York. Decked out in a handlebar mustache and neck tattoo, Travolta de-glams with a vengeance for this role, even eschewing the hair pieces he's been wearing in recent years for a thin patch of scruff.
And yet, there's something about the dude, who calls himself Ryder, that makes you want him to succeed -- or at least keep his game going a little longer. Perhaps it's his don't-give-a-flip puckishness, and his stated ambivalence about whether he lives or dies. Yes, he's doing this to get rich, demanding $10 million in one hour before he starts killing innocents.
But Travolta's impish performance stresses Ryder's perverse sense of pride. He feels like he was persecuted for the sort of corruption that is a matter of course in the city's corridors of power, and before his own wick burns out he wants New York's lords of power to know he knows they're all the same.
Denzel Washington plays Garber, a dispatcher for the city's rail department. In the 1974 original, Garber, played by Walter Matthau, was a transit cop who had to negotiate the byzantine bureaucracy of municipal government to prevent people from dying. Here Garber is a nondescript worker drone, who gets tangled in the mess only because he's the one who answers the radio when Ryder calls in with his demands.
Garber is immediately likeable. He's highly competant at his job, unlike the political flunky who runs the dispatch headquarters. And when Ryder offers to let all the hostages go in exchange for the mayor (played by James Gandolfini), it's Garber who ends up putting his own neck on the line. That earns the respect of Ryder, who calls him "the last friend I'll ever make."
Most of the movie is a verbal game of cat and mouse as Garber keeps talking to Ryder, while navigating the increasingly deep political web in which he gets tangled. At one point, we learn some information about Garber that would cause us to lose respect for him. But the way in which this tidbit is drawn out only makes us root more for him.
There's a great scene where they're trying to rush the $10 million to the subway before the deadline, and there's some intense cross-cutting of Ryder issuing threats over the radio with the police car carrying the money careening through city traffic, getting into increasingly serious mishaps along the way. Suddenly the mayor turns to his aide: "Why didn't we put the money in a helicopter?" It's the sort of thing smarter audiences demand of dramatic thrillers, so we feel good that someone onscreen saw fit to ask the question -- even though it is never adequately answered.
"Pelham" was directed by Tony Scott from a script by Brian Helgeland ("Mystic River"), and manages to be a better-than-average potboiler, while offering a tantalizing first-time pairing of two veteran actors. Travolta and Washington skillfully play off each other, even though we don't see them together till near the end. The wait, and the ride, is worth it.
