The Equalizer Review: Yikes

The Equalizer Review: Yikes

The Equalizer

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Writer: Richard Wenk

Starring: Denzel Washington, Chloe Grace Moretz, Marton Csokas

One time, my dad tried to broil a couple steaks without cleaning the broiler first. Things went okay for a couple minutes, then smoke started flowing from the oven. Things got bright. A spark ignited and everything went up in flames. My dad, thinking quickly, grabbed the enflamed pan and ran out the front door with it, dropping it on the sidewalk where we watched it continue to burn even after shooting it with the garden hose. It was a grease fire, and those things don't end until they are good and ready, no matter how badly you scald your hand or how much you plead.

This is the experience of watching The Equalizer, a never ending, astronomically bad movie.

First, the good stuff. Denzel Washington does what he can to show the two sides of this man of violence and compassion. Chloe Grace Moretz, as a teenager forced into prostitution, gives one heart wrenching look early in the movie as she walks out the door to an ill-fated night of work that is top notch acting from a young actor who is likely to win a lot of awards in her career. Director Antoine Fuqua shoots everything with a professional sheen and stages coherent action scenes that you can actually follow, unlike most modern action films.

The rest of it is willfully insulting to the audience. The first 30 minutes play out like Taxi Driver in microcosm, except with all the complexity removed. Washington is a well trained Travis Bickle with a conscience, where his acts of violence are made directly for the common good instead of serving semi-good ends in a lucky fluke of sociopathic rage. Moretz is Iris, but here she's an aspiring musician with no displayed talent – the movie makes it a point multiple times but never plays a note of her songs – and a laughable knack for telling the audience exactly why Washington's character is a good man, over and over. And several actors playing Russian mobsters take on the Sport role. This would be a fine, if overly familiar, premise if this morality play were to form the movie's plot.

But Washington punishes these people swiftly, the movie forgets all about Moretz after her part in the inciting incident, Bill Pullman shows up looking disturbingly like Mitt Romney's twin in a pointless role, and more Russian mafia higher ups try to kill Washington. For two and a half hours.

This is the type of movie that tells the audience at every turn exactly what to think. I don't mean that figuratively. Characters explain in the most literal terms who is good and who is bad many, many times. Every time there's a chance for the movie to show instead of tell, it chooses to talk down to the viewer. There is no trust that the people watching the movie will understand, for instance, the hero might have strong feelings about seeing an innocent person beaten to a pulp. It flashes back to scenes from minutes earlier to remind people of what they already witnessed. If you've ever seen Rocky IV, the king of "'memba dis?" seconds-later montages, you will have a good idea of what happens several times in The Equalizer. Moretz and Washington's hardware store coworkers are used as mouthpieces for the script to explain how sad the lonely insomniac with sad eyes is, or how kind the man who donates his time to help his coworkers achieve their goals is. Even when the movie tries to work in a non-verbal way, it bashes the viewer over the head as Washington strikes a Jesus Christ pose. In a visual medium where even the most subtle gestures are perceivable to an audience, nobody needs to these stupid overtures. But the movie misunderstands its medium to the utmost degree.

It also ends approximately 40 times. Every time you think you can leave, it tricks you into staying another several minutes. Oof. What a slog.

Some Movies Out This Weekend

Some Movies Out This Weekend

Usually my caveat of, "This is not meant to be a complete overview of every movie out this weekend," applies, but there are only two new movies opening this week in wide release.  I actually had to look up the limited releases to find something intriguing. You will be able to find the third listing at a handful of theaters around Chicago if you're so inclined.

Opening this week, September 26, 2014.

The Equalizer

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Writer: Richard Wenk

Starring: Denzel Washington, Chloe Grace Moretz, Marton Csokas

Based on the 1980s television series, The Equalizer looks to up the violence of the source material and bring some gravitas to a pulpy story – the director and star previously paired on Training Day, which won Washington an Oscar. That's all well and good, but the sting of filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn's (Bronson, Drive, OnlyGod Forgives) departure from the project remains. It's likely the skeletal structure of what drew Refn to the material still exists, but the looks we've had at this movie so far don't promise more than Denzel Washington doing the same thing he's done for a decade. He'll be solid as always, with a stiff-upper-lip resolve and sense of justice, but with the short lead time Fuqua had after taking the project off Refn's hands, it's unlikely he had the option of imbuing it with his personal vision, instead being forced into a director-for-hire gig.

Or it could be an exploration of masculinity and chivalry and how that can go wrong. It can expand on the straightforward hand-to-hand action style hinted by the trailer to become a new action touchstone. It can show Chloe Grace Moretz continue her maturation into a possible awarding winning actress – she clearly is meant to bring to mind the Jodie Foster-in-Taxi Driver role here. The ingredients are there, but it'll likely be a slick Hollywood action thriller instead of the gonzo ultraviolence Refn promised.

The Boxtrolls

Directors: Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi

Writers: Irena Brignull, Adam Pava

Starring: Isaac Hempstead Wright, Elle Fanning, Ben Kingsley, Jared Harris, Nick Frost, Tracy Morgan

Stop-motion animation and charm go a long way with people. So do adaptations of children's literature. This is one ostensibly for kids, but from the looks of it – some good fish-out-of-water humor, a wonderfully talented voice cast, and most importantly, no instantly outdated pop culture references in the trailer – it won't be a bad experience for the parents either.

It looks like a simple hero's journey, but if it's done well, as directors Annable and Stacchi (Coraline, Paranorman) are known to do, chances are this one will be a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half.

Jimi: All Is by My Side

Director: John Ridley

Writer: John Ridley

Starring: André Benjamin, Hayley Atwell, Imogen Poots

Writer-Director John Ridley is a newly minted Oscar winner after having penned last year's 12 Years a Slave. He continues the biopic trajectory here, but with a different century surrounding the subject who is tragic for different reasons than the subject of Ridley's last film.

André Benjamin has always had a theatrical flair as one half of Outkast. He's charming and has a career's worth of knowledge on how to captivate a crowd, so his onstage work as Jimi Hendrix looks to be spot-on. We'll see about his ability to cover the range of human emotions, but he's got the performance aspects down pat.