In Theaters: THE EQUALIZER 2 (2018)

THE EQUALIZER 2
(US - 2018)

Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Richard Wenk. Cast: Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Melissa Leo, Bill Pullman, Ashton Sanders, Orson Bean, Jonathan Scarfe, Sakina Jaffrey, Kazy Tauginas, Garrett A. Golden. (R, 122 mins)

In the first sequel of his nearly 40-year career, the great Denzel Washington again demonstrates enough intensity and steely gravitas to elevate a routine and generic revenge actioner to slightly above average entertainment. Loosely based on the fondly-remembered 1985-89 CBS series THE EQUALIZER, the big-screen franchise--please don't call the next one THE 3QUALIZER--is the fourth teaming of Washington with his TRAINING DAY director Antoine Fuqua, and only slightly retains the premise of retired CIA agent Robert McCall (played by Edward Woodward in the series) offering his services to those in trouble and with nowhere else to turn. With Washington's interpretation of the character already established, the sequel is really just a high-end version of the kind of vigilante movies Charles Bronson would crank out for Cannon in the 1980s. Globetrotting from Istanbul to Brussels to D.C. to Boston, it does give Washington's McCall, a widower who leads a solitary existence and drives a Lyft part-time (he was apparently let go from his Home Depot job after the last film's in-store nail-gun and powertool bloodbath), a chance to help a few people in need: a young girl taken from her mother to her Turkish father's homeland; artistically-gifted teen Miles (MOONLIGHT's Ashton Sanders), who lives in his Boston apartment complex and is tempted by gang life; and elderly Holocaust survivor Sam Rubinstein (Orson Bean sighting!), who's spent his life unsuccessfully searching for both a stolen painting and his younger sister after they were separated as kids and sent to different concentration camps.

Of course, these subplots that most resemble the Woodward series are secondary to the crux of THE EQUALIZER 2, which has McCall investigating the murder of his former CIA boss Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo) in Brussels where she was working with Interpol on a husband/wife murder-suicide that looks staged (because it was) and may have agency ties (SPOILER: it does). McCall seeks out the help of his former partner Dave York (Pedro Pascal), who's understandably shocked to learn that he faked his own death years earlier with the assistance of Plummer. McCall does some snooping on his own, which leads to an attempt on his life by a hired killer under the guise of a Lyft passenger in a nicely-done action sequence. Plummer was obviously about to blow the doors off of something big, and the truth could be--wait for it--closer than McCall realizes.

There's very little in the way of surprises in the cookie-cutter script by mercenary screenwriter Richard Wenk (THE MECHANIC, THE EXPENDABLES 2, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN), and even less in logic in some spots, especially with a climax that's essentially HIGH NOON in a hurricane in an evacuated seaside town. McCall's superhero-like Spidey Sense is one thing, but it's truly amazing how he arrived just as the storm was reaching peak strength with the bad guys very close behind, yet he still had time to plaster a stack of Melissa Leo headshots all over the place with which to taunt the killers as they search for him (also, on the way there, he had Brennan's husband, played by Bill Pullman, riding shotgun but lost him somewhere because he just disappears from both McCall's car and the movie). Like its predecessor, THE EQUALIZER 2 is harmless, brainless action fare, though it tones down the over-the-top gore until the climax, when McCall commences the throat slashings, disembowelings, and eye-gougings. It exists for no other reason than to solidify 63-year-old Washington's place in the post-TAKEN geriatric action scene (though Washington looks younger than his age, it's interesting to note how much older Woodward seemed on the TV series, which ended when the veteran British actor was just 59) and to serve as content on streaming and cable in perpetuity by this time next year. Even when he makes a bad movie--VIRTUOSITY and the terrible remake of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123--Washington is incapable of phoning it in and going through the motions. He has some good moments here and seems to be enjoying himself, even showing some of the TRAINING DAY edginess in a few spots and putting forth more effort than you'd see from a lot of his contemporaries. It's dumb, it's reasonably entertaining, and you won't remember any of it by the time you get to the parking lot. It's a summer movie.

In Theaters: SNOWDEN (2016)

SNOWDEN
(US/France/Germany - 2016)

Directed by Oliver Stone. Written by Kieran Fitzgerald and Oliver Stone. Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Nicolas Cage, Rhys Ifans, Scott Eastwood, Logan Marshall-Green, Timothy Olyphant, Ben Schnetzer, Lakeith Lee Stanfield, Joely Richardson, Ben Chaplin, Nicholas Rowe, Basker Patel, Edward Snowden. (R, 134 mins)

It would be nice if Oscar-winning filmmaker and tinfoil-hat fashionista Oliver Stone was back in provocateur mode with SNOWDEN, but the message is lost in the auteur's didactic execution. Told with myopic tunnelvision and with nothing but gushing admiration for its subject, SNOWDEN lumbers along with little in the way of nuance or subtlety, and nothing in the way of questioning the ex-CIA/NSA whistleblower. It's canonizing hagiography of the most one-sided order, with Edward Snowden the sole voice of morality in a world of evil big government surveillance that exists only to piss on the freedoms of Americans and can't possibly have any positive purpose whatsoever. This should be a nailbiting thriller but Stone is so distracted by his Snowden man-crush that it never has a chance to reach the heights of his in-his-prime conspiracy/paranoia triumphs like JFK or NIXON. It's more in line with the hokey, neutered simplicity of something like WORLD TRADE CENTER. Snowden is a complex, complicated figure, but you wouldn't know it by watching SNOWDEN. Stone isn't interesting in getting in Snowden's head, so you're better off checking out Laura Poitras' Oscar-winning 2014 Snowden documentary CITIZENFOUR instead.

That said, Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a terrific job of capturing Snowden's voice and mannerisms with uncanny accuracy. The film opens in 2013 as an on-the-run Snowden is holed up in a Hong Kong hotel preparing to leak secret CIA and NSA files to documentary filmmaker Poitras (Melissa Leo) and Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson). Jumping back and forth from 2004 to 2013, we follow Snowden through a short stint in the Army, where his goal of joining the Special Forces is stalled by brittle bones and a pair of fragile legs that get him a discharge. Told by his doctor that there's other ways to serve his country, the conservative, Ayn Rand-admiring Snowden is admitted into The Hill, the CIA training facility in Virginia where he becomes the top prospect of (fictional) instructor Corbin O'Brian (a vampiric Rhys Ifans). He also falls in love with liberal Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley), who joins him when his new CIA job takes him to places like Switzerland and Japan, where his focus is cybersecurity and designing programs that are ostensibly used to monitor post-9/11 terrorist activities. He leaves the CIA but works for them on a contractual basis later on, and is disturbed to find that much of the US government's surveillance focus is spying on its own citizens and that one of his programs is used for drone strikes in the Middle East. Growing increasingly concerned about the nature of his work and how far the surveillance goes (he's informed at one point that his suspicions about Lindsay having an affair are unfounded, proof that the omnipresent They are watching her and monitoring her computer and phone activity), he decides to blow the whistle, stealing thousands of secret files and fleeing the country before reaching out to activist filmmaker Poitras.

How heavy-handed is SNOWDEN? The surveillance program is called "Prism," and when invoking it, Stone feels the need to frame shots with a prism effect that's also used when epileptic Snowden has seizures. It actually caused snickering in the audience about the 10th or 12th time it's used. How unsubtle is SNOWDEN? Ifans has been directed to play O'Brian in the most ominously sinister fashion possible, making it difficult to tell if he's a top CIA official or the Antichrist. Watch when he's shown speaking with Snowden in a conference room, Snowden physically there, but O'Brian on a giant, theater-sized screen as Ifans' looming, side-eyed visage takes up the entire display, just in case the whole "Big Brother is watching" concept wasn't already clear. The performances are generally solid, though Nicolas Cage is squandered in an intriguing but tiny role as a benched analyst curating antiquated espionage equipment, his sole purpose being to unknowingly supply the Rubik's Cube that Snowden will use years later to stash the SD card with all the files. But it's Ifans' bizarre portrayal that really sticks out, bringing to mind what might happen if PHANTASM's The Tall Man worked for the CIA. There's a nerve-shredding, Alan J. Pakula-type paranoia thriller to made about Snowden's exploits, and less preachy filmmakers could've done wonders with the subject. Remember that incredible Donald Sutherland exposition drop in JFK? That Oliver Stone could've done something with SNOWDEN. So could Michael Mann in INSIDER mode or David Fincher channeling ZODIAC. There's also a nice Mann vibe in some of Anthony Dod Mantle's digital cinematography in locations all over the world that recalls last year's criminally underrated hacker thriller BLACKHAT. Unfortunately, Stone the filmmaker defers to Dr. Stone the lecturing activist with an agenda. The film completely flies off the rails in a catastrophic climax that recalls Professor Steven Seagal's speech at the end of ON DEADLY GROUND, as Gordon-Levitt actually exits the film and Snowden takes over, playing himself being interviewed via internet from Russia, basking in the standing ovation he gets at a TEDTalk event. This drawn-out finale--more like a tacked-on Snowden infomercial--concludes with an inspirational, manipulative score crescendoing as a pensive Snowden finishes the interview, closes his laptop and turns away, in profile, triumphantly staring out the window of his Russian apartment and smiling, looking like he's waiting for Stone to cue up Foo Fighters' "My Hero" for the closing credits.

In Theaters: LONDON HAS FALLEN (2016)

LONDON HAS FALLEN
(US - 2016)

Directed by Babak Najafi. Written by Creighton Rothenberger, Katrin Benedict, Christian Gudegast, and Chad St. John. Cast: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Alon Moni Aboutboul, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, Jackie Earle Haley, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Charlotte Riley, Colin Salmon, Waleed Zuaiter, Patrick Kennedy, Sean O'Bryan, Clarkson Guy Williams, Bryan Larkin. (R, 99 mins)

This sequel to 2013's OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN has a giant "America! Fuck yeah!" boner swelled to a degree the likes of which we haven't seen since the flag-waving RAMBO sequels and Chuck Norris action movies of the Reagan era. Playing out like what your conservative, Fox News-watching uncle imagines the war on terror to be, LONDON HAS FALLEN has a script that took four credited writers to assemble and may have even been given a final polish by Donald Trump, judging from shouted dialogue like "Just assume everybody is one of those terrorist assholes!" and "Why don't you boys pack up your shit and go back to Fuckheadistan?"  Like the first film, it's an acceptably dumb action time killer and yet another attempt to make Gerard Butler a thing, with the star and producer dropping endless action hero bon mots as Mike Banning, the top Secret Service agent to President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart). Banning and his wife Leah (Radha Mitchell) are expecting their first child and he's just started his vacation and is considering resigning his detail when the President receives word that the British Prime Minister has died of a sudden heart attack following knee surgery. With all the world leaders and dignitaries converging on London for the funeral (of course, the establishing aerial shot of Big Ben, the London Eye ferris wheel, the Palace of Westminster, and the Westminster Bridge over the Thames is accompanied by the caption "London"), the time is right for a massive terrorist attack, which Banning's Spidey Sense naturally detects ("What's wrong?" he's asked, grunting "Nothin'...bugs the hell outta me"). Almost every landmark in London is blown up using what appears to be an explosion app on director Babak Najafi's phone, and when every world leader is killed except for the new PM and Asher, Banning and the President are on the run, pursued throughout London by the interchangeably swarthy, ISIS-like flunkies of Yemen-based terror mastermind Aamir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul). Barkawi has spent two years planning this highly coordinated attack as revenge for a US military drone attack that took out his daughter on her wedding day and left one of his sons a double amputee. Banning manages to get Asher to an MI-6 safe house run by Agent Marshall (Charlotte Riley), who correctly assumes that someone in the British government is a mole working for Barkawi and that the Prime Minister was murdered.

One of the cheapest-looking $60 million films you'll ever see, LONDON HAS FALLEN has plenty of shoot 'em up action sequences that are fairly well-done, especially a few longer ones that try to go for the CHILDREN OF MEN-type set pieces. Najafi (who directed the Swedish crime thriller EASY MONEY II: HARD TO KILL and episodes of the Cinemax series BANSHEE) can't resist presenting Butler's Banning as a gun-toting, knife-wielding, indestructible smartass killing machine who resembles the John McClane of the later, terrible DIE HARD movies, a crack shot who can take out dozens upon dozens of terrorists who fire straight at him and somehow always miss. The bush-league CGI courtesy of Millennium's usual Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX is just an embarrassment throughout, almost Asylum-level chintzy and frankly unacceptable for a major, nationwide theatrical release--it doesn't matter how many big stars Cannon cover band Millennium rope in or how much money they spend, their visual effects and CGI splatter have never progressed beyond their DTV inception in the '90s when Frank Zagarino was the biggest star they could afford. As incredible as it seems, Worldwide FX's craftsmanship is getting worse. Even with all the rampant xenophobia and over-the-top jingoism, the shitty effects are the most off-putting part of LONDON HAS FALLEN, unless you count Butler's incessant one-liners constantly clanging to the ground (on Asher's bad driving, Banning quips "The car's bulletproof, not politician-proof!" and when Asher, hiding in a closet in the safe house, storms out and blows a bad guy away, Banning snarks "I was wonderin' when you'd come out of the closet!"), the completely illogical plotting (Barkawi spends two years planning the attack at the funeral as if he knew that far in advance that the Prime Minister would need knee surgery) or the unfortunate wasting of a slumming and visibly bored supporting cast.

London

Several OLYMPUS alumni return for some easy paychecks and a visit to scenic Bulgaria at Millennium's renowned Nu Boyana backlot: Angela Bassett briefly returns as Lynne Jacobs (all of the characters get pointless name-caption intros), the director of the Secret Service and Morgan Freeman's Speaker of the House Trumbull has been promoted to VP, essentially serving the same function running the War Room, which looks like the backup conference room at the Sofia Holiday Inn. A sleepy-looking Freeman gets to pretty much be Morgan Freeman and gets a decent amount of screen time (he has one scene with Butler, but they obviously weren't there at the same time). Also returning are Melissa Leo as the Secretary of Defense and Robert Forster as the Joint Chiefs chair, and along with new addition Jackie Earle Haley as the White House Chief of Staff--three veteran, rock-solid character actors with four Oscar nominations and one win between them who have maybe a combined 100 words of dialogue as their sole purpose seems to be grimacing at the events in London being displayed on a giant monitor, though from the looks of it, they could just as easily be reacting to the CGI. Moving fast, with the credits rolling at 90 minutes and the new definition of "It is what it is," LONDON HAS FALLEN is a junk movie that nobody other than Butler's agent was really demanding but it at least knows to not overstay its welcome.

In Theaters: THE BIG SHORT (2015)

THE BIG SHORT
(US - 2015)

Directed by Adam McKay. Written by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay. Cast: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Melissa Leo, Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Adepero Oduye, Karen Gillan, Jeffry Griffin, Byron Mann, Billy Magnusson, Max Greenfield, Stanley Wong, Tracy Letts, Wayne Pere, Al Sapienza. (R, 130 mins)

Based on the book of the same name by Moneyball author Michael Lewis and a good companion piece with J.C. Chandor's 2011 film MARGIN CALL, THE BIG SHORT chronicles the disparate group of hedge fund oddballs and outsiders who predicted the bursting of the mortgage bubble and bet against the American economy when it became apparent that the crash was inevitable. Directed and co-written by frequent Will Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay, THE BIG SHORT treats a serious, devastating subject with cynical and often scathing humor, with an offbeat and occasionally anarchic sensibility that's used conservatively enough that it doesn't wear out its welcome. For instance, when the Wall Street verbiage gets a little too technical for the layman, narrator Jared Vennett (a smooth, sarcastic Ryan Gosling) will break the fourth wall to introduce a celebrity and say something like "And now, to explain this in everyday terms, here's Margot Robbie drinking champagne in a bubble bath," or "Here's world-famous chef Anthony Bourdain..." though at times it opts for the easy route and has an incredulous character say "OK, wait a minute...let me get this straight...are you saying....?"

The film, which changes the names of the major players from Lewis' book except for Dr. Michael Burry, centers on a small number of individuals who took the time to separately analyze data to conclude that the global economy was a Jenga tower with a foundation of dubiously unstable subprime loans. In 2005, Scion Capital head Burry (Christian Bale), a socially-awkward former neurologist-turned-hedge fund wunderkind with a glass eye and Asperger's and a penchant for ultra-casual dress and air-drumming to Master of Puppets-era Metallica and Pantera in his office, is the first to notice the initial signs of trouble and of course, no one listens to him. He risks becoming a Wall Street pariah when he invests his firm's money into betting against subprime mortgages (known as a "credit default swap") that he anticipates collapsing beginning in 2007 ("Everybody pays their mortgage!" overconfident bank execs say repeatedly). Vennett is another hedge fund cowboy who overhears news of Burry's maverick actions and finds his own analysis comes to the same conclusion. A wrong number by Vennett ends up bringing him into contact with the abrasive Mark Baum (Steve Carell), an outspoken trader with an axe to grind against big banks, and the head of FrontPoint, a small outfit within Morgan Stanley that's referred to as "the world's angriest hedge fund." Vennett and Baum discover that clumps of bad loans are being repackaged as CDOs (collateralized debt obligation) with inaccurate AAA ratings or just flat-out fraudulent "synthetic CDOs" and it's not only being condoned but encouraged. At the same time, a pair of idealistic young hedge funders from Colorado, Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock), also get word of what Vennett and Baum are up to and want a piece of the action. They secure the assistance of legendary trader Ben Rickert (co-producer Brad Pitt, who had a big success with the movie version of MONEYBALL)--a paranoid semi-recluse who grew so disgusted with Wall Street's dishonesty that he quit the business and retired with his millions to Colorado to live off the land. Rickert informs them that the mortgage collapse will make them millions, but it also means millions of middle-class Americans will lose everything in the process.

That's the message at the heart of THE BIG SHORT. Wall Street's illegal antics and unending greed created a housing bubble that everyone got a piece of until reality set in and the bill came due. It takes a year longer for the bubble to burst than Burry predicted, mainly because the banks were withholding vital information and not being honest about what was really happening as they continued to turn no one down for a home loan ("Immigrants are the best," one broker brags, adding "They don't even know what you're saying!"). To its credit, the film doesn't make its characters into heroes, at the most painting them in shades of gray: they profit from the collapse of the evil financial institutions, but it's still the public that pays the price, especially with the inevitable taxpayer bailout ("They knew this was coming and they did nothing to stop it because they knew the taxpayers would bail them out," Vennett seethes). The ensemble cast is terrific, though only Carell and Gosling have any scenes together (with the exception of a shot where he walks by Carell and Gosling at a convention, all of Pitt's scenes are solo or with Magaro and Wittrock; and Bale never crosses paths with any of them), and the script by McKay and Charles Randolph (who also wrote the absurd THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE) is filled with zingers and quotable dialogue (Vennett to one of Baum's partners played by Jeremy Strong: "That's a nice shirt...do they make it for men?") that almost function as a protective shield from all the devastation on display. There's a good amount of humor ranging from dark to laugh-out-loud, but also gut-wrenching poignancy, as when Baum's partners find entire subdivisions of homes left abandoned when the owners simply walked away from the house, sometimes leaving almost everything behind ("This looks like Chernobyl...all they took was the TV"), and in some cases leaving unlucky renters in the lurch ("He hasn't been paying the mortgage?  But I've been paying my rent!" says one tenant whose family is living in a van by the end of the movie). Easily McKay's most mature work to date, THE BIG SHORT is a bleakly funny, laugh-so-you-don't-cry autopsy of an economic clusterfuck that reinforced the cynicism of today's world: as Vennett says "Only one banker went to prison, all the executives got fat bonuses, and everything was blamed on immigrants and the poor." The end credits tell what the principals have been up to since the events depicted here. The most telling is that Burry's repeated requests to interview Wall Street investment honchos, bank CEOs and government officials about the crash have all been declined and since 2008, the IRS has audited him four times.

In Theaters: THE EQUALIZER (2014)

THE EQUALIZER
(US - 2014)

Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Richard Wenk. Cast: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloe Grace Moretz, David Harbour, Melissa Leo, Bill Pullman, Haley Bennett, Johnny Skourtis, David Meunier, Alex Veadov, Vladimir Kulich, Johnny Messner. (R, 134 mins)

There's been a growing sentiment that Denzel Washington has spent too much time squandering his talents in too many films that are beneath him. While there's little doubt that he's partaken in some forgettable junk that's been elevated simply by his presence--1995's VIRTUOSITY, 2002's JOHN Q, 2009's terrible remake of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123--his career by and large represents a nicely balanced mix of serious and strictly commercial fare done right. He does a lot of mainstream, popcorn entertainment but he's not so ubiquitous that he starts phoning it in and the audience gets tired of seeing him (I'm looking at you, Nic Cage, Bruce Willis, and Johnny Depp). Moviegoers typically see Washington once, occasionally twice a year, and maybe that's where the "squandering his talent" idea comes into play. He works less frequently than a lot of A-listers, and if he's going to act once a year, the argument is that maybe it should be in something a bit more substantive than 2 GUNS. While Washington is unquestionably one of our greatest actors, there's been a desire by the media and his peers to declare him the Sidney Poitier of his generation. He's always seemed to resist that label, likely out of humble deference as he's frequently professed his love and respect for the trailblazing screen legend (and, it should be noted, Poitier took his share of money gigs in his day, both as an actor and a director). Washington can handle Shakespeare (1993's MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING), and serious, socially-conscious, "important" films (1987's CRY FREEDOM, 1989's GLORY, 1992's MALCOLM X) as well as any actor that's ever stepped onto a movie set. But maybe he just likes making one or two entertaining genre pictures every year or two. Maybe he never wanted the baggage and the artistic expectation and the responsibility that comes with being "the Sidney Poitier of his generation." He elevates commercial fare into higher-quality cinema--no one ever accused 2001's TRAINING DAY of being high art, and yet he won his second Oscar for it. Even when it comes to mainstream genre work, he seems to choose his projects carefully and doesn't jump at any script his agent hands him. When Washington starts turning up in 50 Cent-produced cop thrillers with Forest Whitaker and Robert De Niro or in straight-to-DVD, Eastern Europe-lensed actioners with Dominic Purcell, then we can talk about him squandering his talents.

Besides, we like seeing Washington do his Washington thing. The glowering, the intense stare, the argumentative yet calm tone, that indredulous, derisive laughter and the "Alright, alright!" and the "Ha HAA!" just before he explodes. He's the thinking man's badass. Based on the revered, Golden Globe-winning 1985-1989 CBS series that starred Edward Woodward as Robert McCall, a retired government intelligence agent who has an ad in the classifieds offering help to those in dire situations ("Odds against you? Need help? Call The Equalizer"), THE EQUALIZER only somewhat resembles the TV show (it's also worth noting that Woodward portrayed a seemingly much older McCall than Washington's, yet 59-year-old Washington is currently the same age Woodward was when the show ended). Taking the ending into consideration, it can feasibly be termed an origin story of sorts and possibly Washington's first franchise if it's a big enough hit. Washington's McCall is a Boston widower who leads a quiet, solitary life outside of his job at the Home Depot-like Home Mart. Demonstrating a significant degree of OCD, McCall times everything, has to place objects a certain way, and never deviates from his routine. Suffering from insomnia, he spends the wee hours at a neighborhood diner where he drinks tea and reads literary classics like The Old Man and the Sea while making small talk with Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), a teenage prostitute with aspirations of being a singer. McCall takes note when a bruised and battered Teri is roughed up by some Russian mobsters and when she eventually gets beaten so badly that she ends up in a coma, he pays a visit to her pimp Slavi (David Meunier). McCall offers Slavi $9800 for Teri's freedom. Slavi dismisses McCall's offer, prompting McCall's Spidey Sense to kick in as he single-handedly takes out Slavi and a roomful of cackling Russian goons in just under 30 seconds, disappointed in himself that he estimated it would take just 19 seconds.

McCall's heroic actions have consequences, which arrive in the form of Teddy (Marton Csokas, looking a lot like Kevin Spacey here), a "fixer" for powerful Russian crime lord Pushkin (Vladimir Kulich). The merciless Teddy stops at nothing to find out who took out Slavi and his crew, eventually tracking down McCall, which sets off a war where McCall goes full One Man Army against Teddy and the Russian mob, as well as Det. Masters (David Harbour) and other corrupt Boston cops on Pushkin's payroll. Whether its taking out enforcers, disrupting Pushkin's lucrative businesses, or exposing the cops, judges, and politicians getting kickbacks from Pushkin over his various drug, prostitution, human trafficking, and whatever other nefarious activities, McCall vows to dismantle Pushkin's empire "brick by brick, dollar by dollar, body by body."

THE EQUALIZER reunites Washington with his TRAINING DAY director Antoine Fuqua, who often ends up helming by-the-numbers trifles like SHOOTER (2007) and OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (2013), but sometimes manages to turn out a TRAINING DAY or something like the tragically underrated BROOKLYN'S FINEST (2010). Script duties are handled by Richard Wenk, who's penned the Jason Statham remake of THE MECHANIC (2011) and THE EXPENDABLES 2 (2012). Though covered in a big-budget, A-list sheen, THE EQUALIZER's roots are less in the TV show and more in vintage vigilante fare. Admirably demonstrating balls where something like THE EXPENDABLES 3 felt neutered, the film wears its R rating like a badge of honor as Washington's McCall goes on the kind of rampage that would leave THE EXTERMINATOR cringing: almost nothing is off limits here, as McCall becomes an unleashed animal who fires point blank, opens arteries, and drives a wine corkscrew under a guy's jaw (as Fuqua makes sure we see the impaled utensil rooting around the poor bastard's blood-gushing mouth). And that's just a warm-up for the protracted finale, where Teddy and his men track down McCall to the closed Home Mart, a store whose inventory includes no shortage of gardening shears, drills, nail guns and other lethally handy tools for him to use. Some of the kills in THE EQUALIZER are brutally prolonged and unusually sadistic for a mainstream, studio release.

Of course, that's something that works in its favor, but for the film to really work, you have to be onboard with the star, and Washington displays more than enough gravitas to make the film mostly successful. There's a certain persona that Washington projects in this kind of escapist entertainment, and all of the mannerisms in his playbook are on display throughout. Familiar though they may be, they work because we don't see him in three or four movies a year, doing the same thing. For a Washington fan, when something like SAFE HOUSE (2012), 2 GUNS (2013) or THE EQUALIZER comes along, it's like a welcome visit from an old friend. I'll take Popcorn Denzel over transparent awards bait like FLIGHT (2012), a film that seemed overly calculated to get him another Oscar nomination. At 2 ¼ hours, THE EQUALIZER goes on much longer than is necessary, the primary climax takes place in almost total darkness, and it has an almost Peter Jackson-number of endings. Some details get glossed over, like McCall asking Teddy "How did you find me?" when he shows up at his front door, and never getting an answer.  That may be by design and perhaps Fuqua and Wenk are indeed borrowing more from THE EXTERMINATOR (1980) than just the ferocity of McCall's kill methods. In THE EXTERMINATOR, vigilante John Eastland (Robert Ginty) kicks off his spree of vengeance with writer/director James Glickenhaus cutting from one scene straight to Eastland in the middle of torturing one of the punks who killed his best friend. We don't know how Eastland found him and on the Blu-ray commentary, Glickenhaus said that jump was intentional because we know what Eastland is capable of and the audience can just make the leap. It works in THE EXTERMINATOR, and Fuqua and Wenk utilize it here, both with Teddy's ability to find McCall, who more or less lives off the grid other than holding down a job, and in the way we sometimes--despite the film's graphic, over-the-top violence--don't see what McCall does.  Maybe we only see the bodies left in McCall's wake or, in the case of a dirtbag robbing Home Mart and stealing an employee's ring, Fuqua shows McCall grabbing a hammer, then cuts to the next day as the employee finds the stolen ring in her cash drawer and McCall cleans off the hammer before returning it to the shelf.  We don't need to see what happened. The filmmakers trust us to make the leap, and the acknowledgment of such gets audible laughter from the audience.

Wenk also works in some literary allusions with the premise of The Old Man and the Sea, and Fuqua spends more time than usual developing McCall's character and his routine. It works because it allows Washington to flex his thespian muscles before turning into a relentless killing machine. Also, witness the way insomniac McCall gets his first good night's sleep in ages after wiping out Slavi's crew. More so than many a vigilante genre protagonist, McCall can put up a good front when it comes to living a "normal" life and being part of society, but he really only finds inner peace during conflict. Wenk's script also draws parallels between McCall and Teddy (thankfully sparing us from Teddy gravely intoning "We're alike...you and I" to McCall), and it demonstrates just how focused on McCall's character and his world Fuqua is that Csokas doesn't even appear until 40 minutes into the film. This slow buildup works, but as the film goes on, some of the extraneous subplots, especially two involving McCall's overweight co-worker Ralphie (Johnny Skourtis)--who wants to get in shape for a security job and has a restaurant-owning mom who's being shaken down for protection money by a pair of on-the-take cops who have nothing to do with Pushkin or Teddy--only serve to drag the story down once all the pieces are in place. Much of the second-half plot details are filler that could've been dumped with no damage being done, along with a scene of McCall walking away from a CGI explosion that's almost Asylum-esque in its inexcusable shittiness. Melissa Leo has a small role as McCall's old agency boss, but then we also get a few scenes with her husband--played by Bill Pullman, who looks like he's ready to duke it out with Treat Williams over who gets the lead in THE MITT ROMNEY STORY--which does absolutely nothing to advance any element of the story whatsoever. THE EQUALIZER is an entertaining film with Washington at his most commanding, but it's merely pretty good where there's a potentially very good film that could've come from a little tightening.  McCall spends a lot of time riding Ralphie about dropping some pounds.  It's too bad Washington didn't get on Fuqua about shedding maybe 25 minutes of bloat from THE EQUALIZER.

On DVD/Blu-ray: LEGENDARY (2014); CUBAN FURY (2014); and THE ANGRIEST MAN IN BROOKLYN (2014)

LEGENDARY
(UK/China - 2013; US release 2014)

A change of pace for B action stars Scott Adkins and Dolph Lundgren, LEGENDARY is an adventure/monster movie of the JURASSIC PARK sort that has loftier ambitions than its visual effects team can match. Adkins is Travis Preston, a renowned cryptozoologist drawn into the search for a giant lizard on an uncharted island off the coast of China. Bringing along his research team, he's met by big-game hunter and arch-nemesis Harker (Lundgren), who doesn't share Preston's scientific curiosity and only wants to bag the creature as a trophy. The two clashed once before when Preston hired Harker as security on a search for a prehistoric bear that resulted in the tragic death of one member of their party when the arrogant Harker's itchy trigger finger sent the bear on a ferocious rampage, for which Preston shouldered the blame and saw it derail his career. Naturally, Preston and Harker butt heads once more as they close in on the fabled creature, who is expectedly unhappy about having its home invaded by uninvited guests. Cue the ALIENS-inspired scenes of characters watching and listening to radar and sonar equipment as one nervous guy yells "300 yards...200...it's coming right for us!" and finally...wait for it..."it's right underneath us!"

Released in 3-D overseas last year, the $12 million LEGENDARY goes straight-to-DVD in the US and suffers from some really wonky-looking creature effects, both in the prologue with the rampaging bear and later with the giant lizard. It's not quite on the level of SyFy or The Asylum, but it's still not ready for prime time as far as a nationwide theatrical release is concerned.  Fans of Adkins and Lundgren looking for some NINJA or UNIVERSAL SOLDIER-style action will be disappointed:  Adkins was recovering from a knee injury sustained on a previous project and chose LEGENDARY largely because it was light on demanding stunt work and fight scenes as he and Lundgren only have one very brief throwdown. LEGENDARY isn't all that different from a bottom-half-of-a-double-bill B programmer you might've seen in the 1950s, but its draggy pace doesn't do it many favors. Adkins is OK, but doesn't seem at home in these surroundings, while Lundgren, who pops in and out of the movie in a way that suggests the filmmakers probably only had him for a very limited amount of time, seems to relish playing the bad guy by turning in a performance that's somewhat Jack Palance-esque at times. LEGENDARY was directed by the unlikely Eric Styles, who helmed the acclaimed minor 1999 arthouse hit DREAMING OF JOSEPH LEES before completely falling off the radar--his 2000 follow-up RELATIVE VALUES, starring Julie Andrews and Colin Firth, and based on a Noel Coward play, skipped theaters and debuted on Starz, while his 2003 thriller TEMPO (with Melanie Griffith and Rachael Leigh Cook) went straight to DVD. LEGENDARY is Styles' first film since the barely-released 2008 Heather Graham rom-com MISS CONCEPTION, and while it's not terrible, it's pretty slight and forgettable, and really only required viewing for Adkins completists or those with insatiable Lundgren man-crushes. (PG-13, 93 mins)


CUBAN FURY
(France/UK - 2014) 

Despite the success they've achieved together over the years, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost haven't fared as well when they work apart. Pegg has been part of the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and STAR TREK franchises, but a rundown of his headlining films reads like a Do Not Buy list handed to employees of a used movies/music joint when the manager decides they've got far too many copies on hand just taking up shelf space: RUN FATBOY RUN, BIG NOTHING, THE GOOD NIGHT, HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE, BURKE AND HARE, and the miserable A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING range from tolerable to godawful, and none of them will ever be mistaken for Pegg's finest hour. Frost had a supporting role in the very entertaining Edgar Wright-produced alien invasion flick ATTACK THE BLOCK, but CUBAN FURY marks his first solo starring vehicle. Sadly, it can be filed on that same list along with all of Pegg's headlining duds, serving as proof that these two are best taken as a package deal (SPACED, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ, PAUL, THE WORLD'S END).  Based on an idea by Frost, the makers of CUBAN FURY apparently figured "Nick Frost" and "salsa dancing" would be enough to induce guffawing and the rest would just work itself out. It's a dull, ploddingly-paced and thoroughly formulaic and lazy film that, save for one scene, forgets one ingredient that's key to any comedy: comedy.

25 years ago, Bruce Garrett was a teenage salsa phenom who gave it up after he was beaten up by some hooligans on his way to a championship contest. Cut to the present day, and schlubby Bruce (Frost) is a lathe-designer working for a London engineering company that's just brought in new American manager Julia (Rashida Jones). Bruce and asshole co-worker Drew (Chris O'Dowd) start vying for their impossibly nice boss' affections, and Bruce gets the edge when he finds out she's taking salsa classes. Finally inspired to pick up where he left off 25 years earlier, Bruce summons the eye of the tiger so he can go the distance, fulfill his long-abandoned dreams and win over Julia in the process. CUBAN FURY is a film that appears to be working from a checklist rather than a script, right down to the cock-blocking tactics of the bullying Drew, ludicrous meet-cutes (Bruce and Julia bump into one another in the hallway and get their name placards tangled in their lanyards!), and Bruce seeking the guidance of his grizzled old salsa trainer Ron Parfitt (Ian McShane). There is one funny scene where Bruce and Drew have a dance showdown in a parking garage that gets an easy laugh out of a quick cameo, but other than that, CUBAN FURY is a total snooze, laboriously going through the motions of romantic comedy and spoofy redemption saga. Frost is pretty bland, which is disappointing after his marvelous work against type in last year's THE WORLD'S END, and not even Jones' innately charming screen presence or McShane basically coasting through as a salsa-dancing Al Swearengen are enough to make things interesting. Sure, I guess it's better than SALSA, but CUBAN FURY just never heats up, neither comedically nor in the choreography of its dance sequences. (R, 98 mins)



THE ANGRIEST MAN IN BROOKLYN
(US/France - 2014)

Henry Altmann (Robin Williams) is a Brooklyn lawyer with anger management issues.  He hates everyone and everything and he isn't in the mood to wait two hours at the doctor's office only to be told that he has a bleeding brain aneurysm. The news comes from Dr. Gill (co-producer Mila Kunis), who's filling in for Henry's regular doctor, and when a belligerent Henry demands to know how much time he has left to live, she impulsively blurts out "90 minutes." Henry then decides to spend the next hour and a half making amends with his family--his wife Bette (Melissa Leo) and his estranged son Tommy (Hamish Linklater), who enraged his dad when he decided to pursue a career in dance instead of joining the family law practice with Henry and his younger brother Aaron (Peter Dinklage). There was a time, shown in some 1989-set flashbacks, when Henry was happy, but that time has long passed. When his other, favored son was killed in a hunting accident two years earlier, Henry imploded and became the raging asshole he is as he faces death. Even on his quest to set things right, he can't resist going off on everyone, with a xenophobic tirade against an Uzbek cabbie, yelling at homeless people, or mocking a stuttering electronics store owner (James Earl Jones). Dr. Gill has her own issues: bad choices in men, burned out with her job, and secretly nursing a prescription pill addiction, she regrets her frazzled "90 minutes" prognosis and embarks on a late-afternoon journey across the borough to find Henry and get him to a hospital, following the trail of pissed-off New Yorkers he leaves in his wake.

Where to begin?  Let there be no mystery as to why Lionsgate buried this remake of Assi Dayan's 1997 Israeli film THE 92 MINUTES OF MR. BAUM: it's staggeringly bad. Williams is the kind of actor who turns in his best work when he has a strong director to rein him in, and the usually reliable Phil Alden Robinson (FIELD OF DREAMS, SNEAKERS), helming his first film since 2002's THE SUM OF ALL FEARS, isn't up to the task. ANGRIEST MAN indulges nearly every move from the Williams playbook, but mostly his shamelessly sentimental side from PATCH ADAMS and his motor-mouthed talk-show guest persona with bonus F-bombs. In short, this film permits a completely untethered Williams to run rampant in every possible way and none of them good. Henry Altmann is the kind of character that you could almost see Larry David or maybe even Woody Allen, in one of his mean-streaked DECONSTRUCTING HARRY moods, playing with successful results. Either of them would be capable of writing a better script than the one penned by Daniel Taplitz. Not only are the character arcs predictable, but the dialogue is so stilted, awkward, and unreal that Henry's rants and bile-soaked screeds never work. Henry's anger sounds so forced and unnecessarily verbose that it never once feels natural. When Dr. Gill tries to stop him from jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, Henry yells "What are you? I ask you, what are you? Are you my thorn?  My nemesis? Have you no humanity?" Who talks like that? Even 1970s Charlton Heston would've dismissed that speech as pompously melodramatic bullshit. Williams is forced to stumble over dialogue like that throughout. There's also trite and endless third-person narration by Williams and Kunis that accomplishes nothing, and even appearances by the likes of Louis C.K., Richard Kind, Isiah "Sheeeeeeeeeiiiit!" Whitlock, Jr., Jerry Adler, and the great Bob Dishy manage to yield zero laughs. There isn't a single honest moment--either comedic or dramatic--in THE ANGRIEST MAN IN BROOKLYN, and I challenge you to find a worse final scene in a 2014 release than the one presented in this film.  Shrill, screechy, shrieking, bombastic, maudlin, contrived, and most damning of all, unfunny, it's a complete misfire from start to finish, easily Robinson's worst film, and probably Williams' as well, though in all fairness, I haven't seen LICENSE TO WED. (R, 84 mins)

In Theaters: PRISONERS (2013)

PRISONERS
(US - 2013)

Directed by Denis Villeneuve.  Written by Aaron Guzikowski.  Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano, Len Cariou, Wayne Duvall, David Dastmalchian, Dylan Minnette, Zoe Borde, Erin Gerasimovich, Kyla Drew Simmons.  (R, 153 mins)

PRISONERS, the English-language debut of Quebecois director Denis Villeneuve (INCENDIES), is a riveting but frequently frustrating thriller that suffers from its own lofty ambitions.  Scripted by Aaron Guzikowski (CONTRABAND), it works very well as a thriller, but doesn't seem content with just being a thriller.  It wants to make big statements and grand proclamations, but doesn't really do anything with them.  When it focuses on being a "movie," which is what it does most of the time, it's a superbly-crafted genre piece. When it focuses on being a "film," it often succumbs to heavy-handedness.  Villeneuve is an excellent filmmaker, but he comes off as a bit of a snob. I get the feeling that he finds multiplex genre fare beneath him and tries to make this more "significant" than it needs to be, starting with its unwieldy and sometimes cumbersome 153-minute running time.  It's never dull, but it probably could've been just as effective at a more streamlined 120 or so minutes.  It's almost as if the film is long so it would be interpreted as "important." 

The film opens with deeply-religious family man Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) talking his teenage son Ralph (Dylan Minnette) through his first deer kill with a recitation of the Lord's Prayer.  So, right away, we have religion and guns, and Dover also owns his own small carpentry business.  That, along with his fortifying his basement into a survivalist compound, is essentially informing us that Keller is a guy who probably watches a lot of Fox News.  Keller and his family--there's also wife Grace (Maria Bello) and young daughter Anna (Erin Gerasimovich)--spend Thanksgiving with their friends the Birches from down the street--Franklin (Terrence Howard), his wife Nancy (Viola Davis), teenage daughter Eliza (Zoe Borde) and young daughter Joy (Kyla Drew Simmons).  As the day goes on, Anna and Joy walk down to the Dover house but never make it.  Both disappear and Ralph remembers them playing near a parked RV that's now nowhere to be found.  The police are called, and Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) and some officers find the RV at a truck stop, with mentally-challenged Alex Jones (Paul Dano) behind the wheel.  Alex doesn't have the capacity to answer any questions and with no evidence on him or in the RV, the cops can only hold him for 48 hours.  After Alex is released into the custody of his aunt Holly (Melissa Leo),  Loki starts knocking on the doors of all the sex offenders in the area, trying to find any new potential leads, and inadvertently stumbling on to a second mystery involving a rotting corpse in the basement of a convicted pedophile priest (Len Cariou), as well as a local weirdo (David Dastmalchian) who's frequently observed buying little girl's clothing at a secondhand store. Meanwhile, an enraged Keller is convinced Alex knows where the girls are...so convinced, in fact, that he abducts Alex and holds him captive in a vacant, decrepit apartment building that was left to him by his late father, and proceeds to spend several days brutally and mercilessly beating and torturing him to get the information he wants.

For the most part, Jackman convincingly sells Keller's rage, but there are some scenes where he's a little too over-the-top, and Guzikowski's script makes the daring decision to spend a little time almost attempting to turn Keller into not the villain, but a villain, especially when his own actions start to impede Loki's investigation.  But it's here where the problems start.  It takes people way too long to comment on a high-profile kidnapping suspect going missing for days. And how long does Keller expect to get away with what he's doing when he parks his work truck with his name on the side of it near the abandoned building?  And of course the recovering alcoholic Keller falls off the wagon (with the requisite brown paper bag) and of course Grace disappears into a haze of sleeping pills and anti-depressants as Bello spends most of the remainder of the film asleep in bed. The filmmakers don't spend much time at all addressing the grief of the Birch family, but then, they don't have a patriarch who's paranoid and close to foaming at the mouth even on his best days.  It's by design that Howard's Franklin is supposed to be the voice of reason against Keller's all-consuming quest for Biblical vengeance, but the film sometimes forgets that two families are in pain here.

PRISONERS goes into some unexpectedly dark places for a mainstream, big-studio movie, but I found myself most intrigued by Gyllenhaal's Detective Loki and wished that we learned more about his backstory.  Introduced eating Thanksgiving dinner alone at a Chinese buffet, Loki, with his intense blinking tic, zodiac tats on his knuckles, a Freemason ring and neck tat, and awkwardly-fitting shirts that are at least a size too small, is one of the strangest heroes to come down the pike in a while.  He sometimes lets his inexperience show (he tails Keller at one point, but gets made when he ends up blocking traffic and people start laying on their horns), and he's also dangerously impulsive, has no qualms about telling his captain (Wayne Duvall) what he thinks ("Hey, Captain...why don't you do me a favor and go fuck yourself?"), and is a loner on the force who doesn't seem to interact very well with his colleagues.  We don't learn much about Loki's obviously troubled past other than an offhand remark about spending time in a boys' home.  That, and he seems to really personally dislike Cariou's pedophile priest, so interpret that how you will.  Loki's an odd, fascinating character and we're intentionally kept at a distance with him, yet Gyllenhaal utilizes his skills as an actor to bring added dimensions to him (Gyllenhaal has said in interviews that the blinking tic was his own idea).  It's an awards-caliber performance, and the actor's best since David Fincher's 2007 masterpiece ZODIAC.

PRISONERS doesn't disappoint as a thriller but it's flawed as something "more."  Perhaps it's the kind of film that reveals more layers of itself with repeat viewings, but after one time through, a lot of the ambitions come off as pretensions, and character developments--with the exception of Loki--come to rely too heavily on the clichéd and predictable.  Look at the film's handling of Alex:  it's not enough to say he's weird and has the mental capacity of a ten-year-old.  No, they have to dress him in the most comically-outdated clothing imaginable and give him the most aesthetically unappealing eyeglass frames in the history of cinema.  He makes Napoleon Dynamite look like Justin Timberlake.  Dano is fine in the role but the costume design department went a little overboard with his get-up, turning Alex into a cardboard cutout of a character before Dano can even do anything with it.  Flaws and all, it's still a mostly very good film that should be seen, with Roger Deakins' expectedly excellent cinematography being another standout.

In Theaters: OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (2013)

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN
(US - 2013)

Directed by Antoine Fuqua.  Written by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt.  Cast: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, Rick Yune, Melissa Leo, Dylan McDermott, Radha Mitchell, Ashley Judd, Cole Hauser, Finley Jacobsen, Keong Sim, Malana Lea, Phil Austin, Sean O'Bryan. (R, 120 mins)

When the trailer for OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN started making the rounds a couple of months ago, with its seemingly intentionally bad visual effects and dialogue like "I'm the best hope you've got!," "America does not negotiate with terrorists!" and "They've opened the gates of Hell!," one could be forgiven for assuming that a bunch of big-name actors agreed to take part in a fake trailer mocking big-budget, overblown, jingoistic, flag-waving, "America! Fuck Yeah!", porn-for-red-states action explosion epics.  But no...OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN is a real movie with real actors.  And what's most surprising, other than it's not nearly as terrible as that trailer made it look, is that the actors lured by fat paychecks actually seem to be taking it seriously, as if this is the first film of its kind and they're really doing something groundbreaking.  The outrageously overqualified cast is pretty much all this has going for it.  They're the reason this thing cost $80 million and still looks like a shot-in-South Africa, straight-to-video Frank Zagarino flick directed by Sam Firstenberg in 1996.  Avi Lerner and his Cannon cover band Millennium/Nu Image may be able to somehow pull $80 million out of their asses several times a year despite most of their films going straight-to-DVD and the two EXPENDABLES films being their only recent hits, but true to their Golan-Globus heritage, they haven't been able to shed their B-movie skin despite Herculean efforts to do so.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in their continued employment of the Bulgarian visual effects outfit Worldwide FX, whose trademark digital splatter and SyFy Channel-level CGI is showcased here in all its chintzy, D-grade glory.  Rushed into production in true Cannon fashion to beat Roland Emmerich's upcoming and very similar WHITE HOUSE DOWN into theaters, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN is fast-moving and brainlessly entertaining, but the extended CGI destruction of Washington, D.C. (itself CGI'd even before the mayhem, as the film was shot in Louisiana) that's displayed here would've looked subpar in the mid-1990s.  No matter how many A-listers they manage to reel in, Millennium/Nu Image will never be a major player with these kinds of shit-ass visual effects and shoddy, blurry greenscreen work.

Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler, who also co-produced) has been wallowing in guilt at his desk job at the Treasury office. 18 months earlier, he was the chief agent on the security detail of President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), when a car accident during a snowstorm on a bridge along the icy road to Camp David resulted in Banning saving the President's life but not that of the First Lady (Ashley Judd), whose seatbelt was jammed as the limo plummeted into the cold waters below.  The widower Commander-in-Chief removed Banning from his detail, not because he blamed him, but because his presence would be a constant reminder of the First Lady's tragic death to himself and his young son Connor (Finley Jacobsen).  While staring at the computer monitor at his desk after another day of feeling sorry for himself, Banning gets a shot at redemption when North Korean terrorists attack D.C. from the air, killing hundreds of citizens and toppling the Washington Monument in a sequence that would be a stunner were the visuals not so cheap and tacky.  The President is hosting a South Korean delegation, allowing them into the underground PEOC bunker when he and his staff are moved there. Of course, the delegation has been infiltrated by the same group of terrorists, led by the nefarious Kang (Rick Yung).  Kang wants the US military to pull out of the DMZ between North and South Korea and he's prepared to kill President Asher, Vice-President Charlie Rodriguez (Phil Austin), and Secretary of Defense Ruth McMillan (Melissa Leo) before turning America into a post-nuke wasteland if his demands aren't met.

Kang's army overtakes the half-destroyed White House, wiping out the entire security detail, led by Banning's buddy Roma (Cole Hauser), a character who was doomed to die, as he's played by Cole Hauser.  Banning takes out a number of Kang's men before infiltrating what's left of the White House, which apparently doesn't change any passwords or security codes over an 18-month period since Banning still has full access to everything in the Oval Office.  He gets in contact with the Pentagon, where House Speaker Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) is the acting President, providing intel to him and his advisors, Secret Service chief Jacobs (Angela Bassett) and General Clegg (Robert Forster).  Once he locates Connor--codename "Sparkplug"--and gets him to safety through an air vent (Banning sure knows a lot of easy, unsecured ways in and out of the White House), he goes to work eliminating Kang and his cohorts--including former Secret Service agent-turned-hired gun traitor Forbes (Dylan McDermott), who helped coordinate the infiltration--and rescuing the President.

If you think this sounds a lot like DIE HARD, well, you're right.  Several scenes are restaged almost in their entirety, including a botched chopper rescue attempt that's shot in such a similar fashion that you almost expect Robert Davi and Grand L. Bush to show up as Agents Johnson and Johnson.  And of course, even though he's "the best hope you've got," someone--in this case, Clegg--has to be the requisite "Deputy Chief of Police Dwayne T. Robinson" of the film and doubt Banning and his intentions at every turn, if only to have someone else pipe up about what a dedicated badass he is.  And there's also the tough guy wisecrackery, but when Banning tells Kang "Let's play a few rounds of Fuck Off...you're it!," it doesn't quite have the same iconic punch as "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!"  Butler is OK in Hollywood's latest attempt to make Gerard Butler happen, though he isn't really exerting himself here in what amounts to a two-hour Bruce Willis impression.  He does have a nice rapport in his scenes with young Jacobsen.  Eckhart mainly clenches his teeth and yells "Fuck you!" a lot, while the hammy overacting is left to Leo, who gets kicked and beaten to a pulp not once but twice (after the first, she asks President Asher, with blood dripping from her mouth, "How's my hair?"), and in the film's most unintentionally hilarious moment, is dragged down a hallway by her hands to her presumed execution while kicking and shrieking "I pledge allegiance to the flag!  Of the United States of aaaaagggghhh!"

Freeman brings surprising humanity and gravitas to the Speaker of the House, a man who disagrees with the President but puts politics aside and demonstates humility and nervousness over the role he wasn't expecting to be playing when he woke up that morning.  Considering the stock, one-dimensional characters in Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt's script, I'm sure this level of complexity was brought to the table by Freeman himself, and his scenes have some unexpected credibility to them.  I particularly liked his initial anxiety when confronted with the situation and how he's stammering and indecisive and rapidly losing the confidence of everyone in the room when he dodges questions and instead asks someone for a cup of coffee, "with double cream and three Sweet & Lows...and put it in a real cup, not one of those styrofoam things," then closes his eyes, and something snaps in him and he's ready to take charge.  It's just a little moment of real, human feeling in an otherwise dumb movie, and Freeman, pro that he is, totally sells it when all he really needed to do was show up.

Directed by the underrated Antoine Fuqua, who fares much better with more grounded and gritty films like TRAINING DAY and the criminally underappreciated BROOKLYN'S FINEST, the shockingly cheap-looking OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN isn't quite the laugh-riot you'd expect from the trailer, and if it weren't for the horrible CGI and the fact that the President's high-tech bunker looks like it was quickly thrown together in Avi Lerner's basement, it would almost certainly play better.  As it is, it's the kind of movie where an aerial shot featuring the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument includes a caption that reads "Washington, D.C."  It's a forgettable but stupidly entertaining enough way to kill two hours, and for what it's worth, it's miles ahead of the abysmal A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD.  But really, it's long past the time for Worldwide FX to install a software update or close up shop because their work just isn't cutting it anymore.  Say what you will about Roland Emmerich, but he's a guy who knows how to convincingly destroy Washington D.C., and his WHITE HOUSE DOWN (with President Jamie Foxx's life in the hands of Secret Service agent Channing Tatum.  No, really) will undoubtedly make OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN look even more amateurish than it already does.

In Theaters: FLIGHT (2012)

FLIGHT
(US - 2012)

Directed by Robert Zemeckis.  Written by John Gatins.  Cast: Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Melissa Leo, Bruce Greenwood, Tamara Tunie, Nadine Velazquez, Brian Geraghty, Keven Gerety, James Badge Dale, Garcelle Beauvais. (R, 139 mins)

Veteran airline pilot Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) wakes up in an airport hotel room in Orlando with a naked woman and a floor littered with empty bottles. Groggy and hungover, he does a quick line of coke to balance himself out.  It's 7:00 am and he's piloting a 9:00 am flight to Atlanta.  The woman, Katerina (Nadine Velazquez) is one of his flight's attendants.  Whip is good to go and feelin' alright, as evidenced by a shot of Washington striding through the airport terminal to the tune of Joe Cocker's version of Traffic's "Feelin' Alright."

The planned 52-minute flight experiences some major turbulence but Whip gets them through it.  Only later, after Whip hands the controls over to co-pilot Ken Evans (Brian Geraghty), pours three mini bottles of Smirnoff into his orange juice and takes a quick nap in the pilot's seat, does all hell break loose.  The plane starts to nosedive and and West's steering mechanisms fail.  Whip decides to "roll" the plane by veering it to the point where it flies upside down, evening out the plane and stopping the dive.  All power eventually fails and Whip guides the plane to a crash landing just past a small church (MESSAGE!), losing six of the 102 passengers onboard.  Two crew members are killed, including Katerina.  Whip's daring method of handling the crash turns him into a hero, but there's a problem.  Standard NTSB protocol after a crash is to draw blood for analysis.  Whip was battered in the crash and unconscous for several hours and doesn't recall the blood being drawn.  They find the alcohol and cocaine in his system, and despite the clear reason for the crash being a faulty rear elevator assembly that caused the plane to nosedive, Whip's extracurricular actitivies present the possiblity that he's on the hook for manslaughter in the passenger deaths.

FLIGHT would seem to offer Washington the kind of tour de force that results in instant Oscar buzz.  He's a great actor, one of the best, but even he has a hard time elevating this beyond the point of hackneyed and predictable.  After the harrowing opening 20 or so minutes, the film turns into the kind of by-the-numbers addiction drama that frankly, we've seen a hundred times before.  While in the hospital, Whip meets Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a heroin addict recovering from an overdose, and they become friends after he's discharged.  She cleans up her act and tries to help him, but Whip, the kind of guy who doesn't need any help and shuts out anyone who tries, continues to drink and use.  Director Robert Zemeckis, helming his first live-action film since 2000's CAST AWAY, can't resist repeatedly hammering home the plot points over and over again, usually with the ham-fisted use of a popular song accompanying the scene just in case the audience is too dense to get it.  Was it necessary for a scene of Reilly shooting up to use both the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge" and Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane"?  Or to have Whip's dealer (John Goodman) introduced to the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil"?  FLIGHT starts out believably grim and realistic--as a character, the arrogant, irresponsible Whip is only slightly less of an asshole than Washington's Alonzo Harris in TRAINING DAY--but it grows increasingly "Hollywood" the more it proceeds towards it inevitably uplifting ending.  Allowing Whip some level of redemption is fine, but the path to it just feels hollow.  Zemeckis and screenwriter John Gatins (COACH CARTER, REAL STEEL) completely lose it in the home stretch when the perpetually self-destructive Whip falls off the wagon hard the night before a federal hearing and his lawyer (Don Cheadle) and union rep (Bruce Greenwood) resort to methods of sobering him up that very nearly turn the film into a comedy.  Let's just say it prompts Zemeckis to use an instrumental Muzak version of The Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends."

There's a lot of good things about FLIGHT.  Washington commands the screen, which should surprise no one.  British actress Reilly believably handles a southern American accent.  The terrifying crash sequence is easily the film's highlight.  But the film just really loses its way in the second half before utterly collapsing in the last half hour.  A lot of us have seen functioning alcoholics in action, but FLIGHT takes functioning alcoholism to ridiculous extremes, with Whip consuming amounts of alcohol that no one could handle, let alone fly a plane or calmly testify at a hearing.  At some point, despite a solid start, FLIGHT becomes less concerned with the plausible depiction of Whip's personal hell and more focused on getting Denzel Washington another Oscar.