Review: The Equalizer

by Trevor Kirkendall

★

“The Equalizer” is yet another example of how Hollywood producers have either lost their creative mentality or just don’t care about finding original stories anymore. They’re out there, though. Studios continue to buy original concepts from writers, many of them first-time screenwriters. But where are these movies? The indie houses crank them out all the time, but they never make it to the big theaters.

I have another theory though: Hollywood finds it easy to regurgitate the same formula over and over again because they know you’re going to see it. The think we – as an audience/consumer – are stupid. Everyone always says they’re sick and tired of sequels, remakes, and reboots and that we demand originality. But which ones do the best at the box office? “Godzilla” or “Pacific Rim?” Both are the same movie, just one has a franchise title on it. Same rules apply here with “The Equalizer.” Would anyone see this movie if it didn’t have the name of widely successful TV series from the 80s? Probably not.

But I digress. “The Equalizer” stars Denzel Washington as Robert McCall, a heavy lifter at the local Home Mart, a Home Depot/Lowes type of store. No one really knows what he did before he began his job at Home Mart. Every day, McCall comes to work, eats his healthy lunch, goes home, reads, and never sleeps. Since he can never sleep, he spends many nights drinking tea at a local diner near his home.

At the diner, he befriends a young escort named Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz). She hates her job, but knows no other life. Turns out, she’s been brought to the United States from her Russian home and forced into this life. When her handlers brutally beat her within an inch of her life for insubordination, McCall decides enough is enough and murders her Russian bosses in their office. That’s enough for the big boss in Russia to send someone to clean up the mess, a ruthless one-dimensional villain named Teddy (Marton Csokas).

This is a big screen television adaptation in name only. Other than calling the main character Robert McCall, and a little homage to the series right before the closing credits, there is nothing about this film that remotely resembles the original series. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the story doesn’t hold up well at all. I can look the other way on the whole “adapted-from-a-television-series” thing, but a half-assed, cliché littered screenplay cannot be overlooked.

I’m sure the script in its original form was probably okay, until some Hollywood executive got his hands all over it and decided to change the main character’s name to Robert McCall and slap “The Equalizer” brand name all over it. Rather than change things around and throw an old 80s show title on the poster, they should have spent more time on the story itself because this is not good. The whole plot point the sets this story in motion is one of the most far-fetched examples of an inciting incident to come across the silver screen all year. Not to mention, it takes almost an entire half hour to reach. By that time, I assume most people will have already tuned out much of what’s already happened. But if they didn’t call it “The Equalizer” would anyone go see it? Nope.

Director Antoine Fuqua continues to prove himself as an inept storyteller. Aside from “Training Day,” which is mediocre at best, Fuqua only concerns himself with staging action sequences and concocting moments of cheap thrills. For “The Equalizer,” Fuqua delivers nothing new. In fact, he pulls out all the tricks in the book to make this film full of every crime film cliché we’ve seen since the dawn of the genre. He directs his focus to setting up brutally violent sequences rather than finding things for the audience to empathize with and gain some form of a rooting interest. Not that the script from Richard Wenk (“The Expendables 2”) had much there to begin with. Fuqua’s cast receives no favors either.

Denzel is Denzel, playing the same action hero/crime fighter he’s played in almost all his movies. I do like him as an actor for the most part, but his choice of films lately has me questioning if he really is as good as we make him out to be. But every time I start to feel this way, he ends up doing something fantastic – like “Flight” – and all is forgiven. At least, until his next atrocity. The only person worth mentioning in this film is Mortez who continues to show she is much more proficient in her ability than her age would indicate. And yet, she’s greatly misused here, taking up only a small amount of screen time despite being the catalyst for the entire story. I’m not saying she’s memorizing in this role by any stretch, but at least she does bring something new in this performance we don’t normally see from her.

For a film about brutal revenge killings, I suppose “The Equalizer” could be considered decent. But fans of the 80s television series will be supremely disappointed when they see someone masquerading around as Robert McCall not acting like the Robert McCall they all know and love. This is a cheap and blatant attempt by a Hollywood studio to capitalize on its own history again by slapping the name of a once successful series and trying to market it as something new and fresh. We shouldn’t be so easily fooled by this, but I have a feeling this film will do well and will no doubt produce some kind of sequel, or worse, a long running franchise. That’s just what we need: more vapid and uninspired garbage from studios only interested in repackaging the same exact thing you’ve seen over and over and over for the last decade or two.

Review: Noah

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★½

“Noah” is the first film of the year that carries with it a wave of controversy. Many of the world’s religions hold Noah in high esteem. To tell the story of Noah and his ark would seem so simple. But Hollywood has a habit with overcomplicating things when it comes to adaptation. Why do something so simple for only $60 million when we can spend $160 million and rival the trilogies of Middle Earth? Hollywood reached out to one of the most visionary directors working today, Darren Aronofsky, to craft this film and make it something so much more than the story everyone is so familiar with. The result is stunning cinema, but more of the same-old-same-old when it comes to the story.

Russell Crowe stars as Noah, a descendant of Seth who was the third son of Adam and Eve, born after Cain’s slaying of Abel. Early on, we see Noah’s father Lamech (Marton Csokas) killed by a young Tubal-cain (Finn Wittrock), a descendant of Cain who embodies mankind’s evil. Noah sees this, but is able to flee. Next we see Noah with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and their three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth. Noah has a vision of death and destruction at the hands of the Creator causing a great flood. He and his family leave their home to seek out Noah’s grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins).

On their way, they come across a small village that has been ravaged by Cain’s followers. One survivor is a young girl named Ila who has been severely injured. Noah saves her and takes her in as an adoptive daughter of sorts. They seek refuge from the evil men with the Watchers, who are angels cast down from Heaven by the Creator because of their sympathy toward Adam and Eve. Upon reaching earth, the Watchers took the form of massive stone giants. They eventually reach Methuselah who helps Noah figure out what the Creator wants him to do: build an ark to house all the animals of the world from the great flood. The remainder of mankind will be washed away and killed.

It takes about 10 years for Noah to build the ark with the assistance of the Watchers. Shem (Douglas Booth) has grown into man who has fallen for Ila (Emma Watson), whose injury from her childhood has left her unable to conceive a child. Noah’s middle son Ham (Logan Lerman) is somewhat jealous of his brother because Shem will have a wife for himself after the flood. He and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) will not have anyone.

Once all the animals start showing up at the ark, Noah is visit by Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone) and his army of evil men. He wants on the ark, but Noah knows it’s only for the animals. Noah believes the Creator is tired of mankind, and wishes for only animals to remain in his world. Noah will see to it that mankind will not remain following the great flood. Not even himself or his family.

Darren Aronofsky has made quite a career by producing dark and intense films. “Noah” is no different. Make no mistake, Aronofsky doesn’t hold back on anything. His vision is ambitious and his handling of the film is as much fearless as it is controversial. All of his stories are difficult to watch because they’re all so bleak and paint members of the human race in such unique situations. This film is simply an Aronofsky take on a timeless story everyone knows.

All that said, Aronofsky take many creative liberties with his source material, but that’s no different than any of the other book adaptation Hollywood attempts to make. The only difference here is that this story is sacred text for billions of people worldwide. And that’s where the controversy arrives. Aronofsky has turned this timeless tale into a film with a certain fantasy epic element that feels more like “The Lord of the Rings” than a feel good story from the Bible.

If these changes to the story affect the way you perceive this film, that’s really your own opinion and I cannot fault you on that. But from a film standpoint, Aronofsky has great vision as always, and is able to bring to life some very eye catching moments. He’s also able to bring out some very shocking and frightening imagery too. He’s definitely one filmmaker who can put forth such great juxtaposition between beauty and horror, light and dark, uplifting and heartbreaking. Many of his movies run across many spectrums of emotion. He’s a master of conveying this.

However, he limits his abilities here with several moments of disconnection in his screenplay, one he co-wrote with his longtime collaborator Ari Handel. In their attempt to bring the element of fantasy into the film, Aronofsky and Handel deal a fatal blow by trying to tie in too many subplots that don’t enrich the story. The first act is drawn out unnecessarily long, probably to show off the trademark shots so closely associated with Aronofsky. And the third act is a complete mess. This is nowhere near as polished as the screenplay for “Requiem for a Dream” which is structurally similar to “Noah” in many respects.

The vast cast of talented people is also lost in the confusion of the story. No one really wows in his or her performance. Sure, they all have their moments, but nothing really stands out. I will have forgotten every one of these performances by next week. Not to take anything away from them; they’re all talented (especially Crowe, Connelly and Watson), but they seem to have lacked the proper guidance from their director who was more concerned with the visual elements that the things that actually make a film good.

I don’t ride the fence on movies too often, but I’m right in the middle here with “Noah”. While I will still say Aronofsky is an exceptionally talented filmmaker with a sharp and original vision, he skimps on his story too much when he’s handed a large budget. “Noah”, much like his last big budget effort “The Fountain”, is a stunningly beautiful mess of an epic tale. It’s gorgeous to look at and provides many moments of extreme and genuine intensity, but it lacks the depth and substance that we’ve come to expect from him thanks to films like “The Wrestler” and “Black Swan”. Both of those films were so well written (not by Aronofsky) and executed to near-perfection with his trademark style (I named “Black Swan” the Best Picture of 2010). A film is only as good as its story, and I think Aronofsky might have gotten a little too carried away with turning a classic and well known story into a epic fantasy film.