Review: "The Equalizer 2"

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.

Video review: "The Magnificent Seven"

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.

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Review: "The Magnificent Seven"

“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.

Review: "Southpaw"

You go to see a movie like "Southpaw" for the gritty performances and slam-bang boxing scenes. From a story standpoint it's a pretty generic boxing plot, with our scrappy champion rising and falling, falling and rising, from the mat and metaphorically.

The screenplay by Kurt Sutter is original only on a technicality, liberally cribbing its plot from the "Rocky" movies and other boxing flicks. (He reputedly wrote the script with Eminem in mind, basing it loosely on the rapper/sometime actor's life story. Em doesn't appear, though he supplies a couple of punchy songs.)

Jake Gyllenhaal plays the protagonist with the not-at-all-subtle name of Billy Hope, who rose from the hard streets of New York City through dint of hard work and an unmatched ferocity in the ring, an unwanted orphan who became light heavyweight champion.

Then through a succession of senseless disaster and self-destructive behavior, Billy loses it all, including custody of his 10-year-old daughter, Leila (Oona Laurence). He's forced to reinvent himself as a fighter and as a man, starting from the bottom again and earning his way back to glory and redemption.

This is Boxing Movies 101 stuff. Check that; it's actually 201. Boxing 101 is "Rocky" and "Rocky II," where an unknown pug rises to the championship. "Southpaw" is "Rocky III" and "IV" -- they're virtually interchangeable, really -- where the reigning champ takes things for granted, gets knocked down a peg or seven, and has to scrap back to former heights.

There literally isn't a single surprise along the way, including the inevitable final match. You've got the familiar nemeses along the way, including a black-hearted young boxer (Miguel Gomez) who was responsible for Billy's fall, and the mercenary boxing promoter/manager (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson), who tells Billy they're family but saves his deepest love for the hottest prospect.

It's an interesting role for Gyllenhaal, who jumped off the traditional Hollywood star train a few years back to pursue smaller, more personal projects like "Nightcrawler" and the excellent "End of Watch." He's fought against his blue-eyed prettiness during this time, and in "Southpaw" he really works the scarred, stumblebum angle, muttering his lines and cocking his one good eye.

After losing a bunch of weight for "Nightcrawler" he packs on the ripped muscles for this role, and director Antoine Fuqua obligingly sweeps his camera and lights across Gyllenhaal's torso to emphasize the craggy wall of his abdomen. (I'm not really sure when abs became a thing; you'd think a boxer would want a little padding there to better absorb blows.) The actor's body becomes this strange mix of revulsion and fetishized object; we linger over his spent blood and abused flesh like a latter-day Lazarus.

The fight scenes are well-choreographed and energetic, though in the commonplace failing of Hollywood boxing movies, the fighters absorb more solid blows in a single round than most pugilists encounter in a year. Billy's strategy, if you can call it that, is to let opponents wallop him until he gets furious enough to uncork his pent-up rage.

Forest Whitaker is terrific as Tick Wills, an old-school trainer who teaches kids at an inner-city gym. Billy comes to him at his bottom, after lost having his wife (Rachel McAdams) to tragedy, his daughter to social services and his fame and fortune to his own self-hating spiral. Tick is old and tough, has taken his own cuts, and retrains Billy as a defensive fighter. "Protect yourself" is his mantra, underlined by one cloudy eye.

Just as the two men begin to trust one another, the filmmakers shortcut the journey and we're back to the ring again for Billy's deliverance. A smarter, better movie would've had Billy turn down the offers of quick money and a shot at the title, realizing that when you've gone down the path of destruction you can't just back up to solve your problems.

But who wants to see a boxing movie about a boxer who doesn't want to box anymore? Me, but apparently few others.

Video review: "The Equalizer"

“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.

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Review: "The Equalizer"

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.

Video review: "Olympus Has Fallen"

Maybe we give too many points to originality. I'd rather see a really well-done rehash of old material than a wholly original movie without a dram of flair and wit. "Pacific Rim" may just be a mash-up of monster and robot movies, but it was giddy and fun. "After Earth" was a brand-new idea, but disastrously executed.

"Olympus Has Fallen" is hardly a novel flick. Start with the fact that it's one of two movies out this year about terrorists taking over the White House. And the plot is barely more than "Die Hard" with a zip code change.

But this action/thriller from director Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day") is a zippy, taut distraction. It's entirely implausible, but the sort of movie where you can park your brain in neutral for a couple of hours and have a good time.

Gerard Butler plays Mike Banning, a disgraced Secret Service agent who gets trapped in the White House when North Koreans attack. (I said implausible!) With the rest of the president's detail wiped out, he turns into a one-man wrecking crew, while the POTUS (Aaron Eckhart) and secretary of defense (Mellissa Leo) are trapped in the underground bunker by the sneering villain (Rick Yune).

There's some political intrigue, a side plot involving the president's kid hiding in the building's secret spaces -- though thankfully no lame tacked-on romance. Mostly it's Butler mowing through bad guys and trading insults via radio with the mastermind.

If that sounds a lot like John McClane taunting Hans Gruber while knocking off his henchman from twenty-odd years ago, that's because it is. But the very reason Hollywood recycles old ideas is because they're good ones.

"Olympus Has Fallen" may not be new, but sometimes something old is a better bet.

Video extras are rather modest. There are five making-of featurettes touching on standard subjects like stunts, special effects and casting the film. Add in a blooper reel, and you're done.

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Review: "Olympus Has Fallen"

This seems like good timing for a slick, slightly jingoistic action/thriller with a geopolitical bent. America continues to writhe in its economic doldrums, madmen puff and pose overseas, and sometimes it feels as if members of our political parties regard each other as dire enemies rather than fellow citizens.

“Olympus Has Fallen” is a play on a familiar theme, but one executed with craftsmanship and skill. The plot is essentially a spawn of “Die Hard” -– terrorists take over a place, killing hostages and outwitting emergency responders, but unbeknownst to them a lone, determined lawman is trapped inside and sets about mucking of their plans.

The big twist here is that the building under siege is none other than the White House, the chief hostage is President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and the bad guys are North Korean terrorists looking to impose nuclear domination over the Far East.

Now, the movies have depicted the President’s abode being blown up a few times before, but never a plausible and frightening depiction of it being successfully stormed by hostile forces. Rookie screenwriters Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedickt lay out the scenario with surgical precision, even showing how the Koreans cleverly use the Secret Service’s protective protocols against them.

Things end up with Asher and his closest advisors trapped in the underground presidential bunker, where the terrorists can take their time using brutality to extract the secret nuclear codes. The villain is Kang (Rick Yune), a smiling, hyper-intelligent type who’s eminently hiss-able.

The fly in the proverbial ointment is Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), a disgraced Secret Service agent who was kicked off the president’s detail when he failed to save the First Lady. He starts to take out the terrorists in ones and twos, leading to inevitable exchanges of taunts with Kang via radio.

Banning’s also in touch with the acting president, Speaker of the House Trumbull (Morgan Freeman), who dithers between the aggressive urgings of his top general (Robert Forster), who wants to send in a flood of soldiers, and the more cautious advice of the Secret Service chief (Angela Bassett).

Melissa Leon plays the combative secretary of defense, who’s trapped along with her commander-in-chief. Dylan McDermott is a retired Secret Service agent with a surprising new gig, and Finley Jacobsen portrays the president’s feisty son, who has an intimate knowledge of White House hiding places.

Director Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”) keeps things moving at a brisk pace, sacrificing characterization for tension-building plot. His depiction of an attack on Washington, D.C. manages to be harrowing without being exploitative -– though a shot of the Washington Monument crumbling under its own weight needlessly recalls the Twin Towers.

The main protagonist, Banning, is actually the weakest piece of the puzzle. He should be more tormented about his previous failure, but he registers as a generic action-movie badass, spouting quips and killing messily.

(Butler’s accent doesn’t help; the Scot tries to speak American and ends up sounding Australian.)

“Olympus Has Fallen” is hardly groundbreaking cinema. But in reinventing an old tale in a smart and engaging way, it’s a thoroughly entertaining and often riveting way to spend two hours.

3.5 stars out of four