“The Equalizer” – MacGyver’s a sissy.

The Equalizer continues my string of going into movies and knowing next to nothing about them. This one ups the ante of my ignorance because, not only did I see exactly zero previews, but it’s based off a television show of the same name that ran from 1985 to 1989. I only know that because my friend told me about it after we watched the movie. I was alive during those years and watched similar shows like The Fall Guy and The A-Team, yet I had never even heard of it, let alone seen an episode. So, if you ever needed proof that I might not have the first clue what I’m talking about, there you go.

(SPOILERS coming, but only the gross kind.)

I’m also not the only one continuing a trend. Denzel Washington has jumped onto the bandwagon of middle-aged dudes starring as super spies/agents/soldiers, following Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan (guys like Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis don’t count because they’ve been doing that role for decades). In The Equalizer, (in my head, the title is always Denzel Washington is The Equalizer) Washington plays Bob McCall, a quiet, OCD widower, working at HomeMart (it’s essentially Home Depot), living alone, and spending nights at a little diner because he can’t sleep. His hobby is encouraging people to better themselves and applicants need not apply. Are you a fat clerk who wants to make security guard? Bob will help you lose weight. Are you a hooker who can sing? Bob will listen to your CD. Did your pimp beat the shit out of you and put you in the ICU? Bob will shoot that pimp in the neck and kill the pimp’s henchmen with a corkscrew. You don’t even need to ask, Bob’s just that kind of guy.

Incidentally, that last one is what sparks the rest of the movie. During the diner scenes, the hooker, Alina (Chloe Grace Moretz), and Bob develop a friendship. Bob decides he can’t allow the pimp to go unpunished for nearly killing Alina, resulting in the previously mentioned scene. What Bob doesn’t realize is that the pimp he kills isn’t just some run of the mill pimp; he’s a Russian mid-level gangster in charge of East-coast operations. Bob has unwittingly kicked off a chain of clichéd action events in which the bad guy will expend a tremendous amount of resources to kill Bob, even after learning that Bob isn’t a threat. This also introduces us to Bob’s counterpart – head henchman Teddy (Marton Csokas) who has no qualms about killing low-level competitors, his own prostitutes, or cops on his payroll, whether they know anything or not. He’s an adequately terrifying (at least to other characters) villain and, even though he begins as a patient and calculating guy and we’re told he is an ex-Russian special forces soldier, he slides into the standard villain tropes such as kidnapping Bob’s friends and trying to lure Bob into a trap. Rookie mistake, Teddy.

I’d like to tell you there’s more plot than that, but there isn’t. It’s nothing more than a two hour and fifteen minute exercise in Bob doing his best impression of MacGyver, but only if MacGyver were a sociopath and finding ever more intricate ways to kill people. What makes the movie interesting isn’t everything I’ve just told you but Bob himself. The movie uses a Sherlock-ian film technique whenever Bob is morphing from softball teammate to assassin by quickly panning and zooming between specific details in the shot, giving the impression that Bob is sizing up and planning every move in the next minute or so and transforming into killer-Bob. Killer-Bob likes to stare at enemies he hangs with razor wire, watch the corkscrew turn through a guy’s tongue as he twists it, sit next to a dying foe while narrating to the foe how the next thirty seconds will kill him, and watch a bad guy slowly suffocate in a car being pumped with exhaust fumes. Why is this interesting? Denzel is so good with his performance that you aren’t sure if he is not enjoying the killings along with Bob. As the bodies piled up, I found myself wondering why Bob actively avoided picking up guns off people he just killed since it sure would make it easier to kill the rest of them rather than setting up semi-elaborate traps using pole-saws and microwaves. If that’s not enough, Bob seems to only be able to sleep after killing people and after visiting a friend from the mysterious agency they elude to, she informs the viewer that Bob didn’t go to them for help with his Russian problem, but, rather, permission to deal with it. It’s a fascinating character trait contradicting nice-guy Bob who is trying to read through the one-hundred-classic-novels-that-everyone-must-read that his wife didn’t finish.

As far as action movies go, The Equalizer is a pretty standard fare and doesn’t do enough with the other characters to make us care about anything. Alina disappears after Bob sees her in the hospital and doesn’t appear again until everything has been dealt with. We’ve already talked about Teddy, Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman make cameos, and the rest of the characters are fodder for either side. This movie is all about Bob, but, luckily, Denzel owns it.

Rating: Ask for two dollars back. As good as Denzel is, the movie is about 25 minutes too long and nobody needs to see that corkscrew in full IMAX detail.

“The Maze Runner” – Only missing David Bowie.

I hope the fad of Hollywood turning Young Adult (YA) books into movies never ends. It’s a never-ending source of dystopian futures, vampires, werewolves, witches, idyllic (and impossible) teen romances, teen angst, and the continued insistence that junior high kids are actually “young adults” and not “older children, most of who have entered that phase where they hate their parents and their parents have fantasized strangling them with their stupid skinny jeans.” If you think I’m being sarcastic, well, I am – but not for the reason you think. The fact that the film rights to the books are being snatched up by the dozen means that more of them will be written and I love books. It also means that we get excellent adaptations of phenomenal books like The Hunger Game and equally abysmal adaptations like Beautiful Creatures, Vampire Academy, The Mortal Instruments, and I am Number Four (I actually enjoyed two of those, though wouldn’t defend them as good movies – I’ll leave you to guess at which two). The sarcasm is pointed at the supernatural themed books, which really have oversaturated the genre and many of which we could all do without. While it’s true that they provide great fodder for my reviews, they have gotten incredibly redundant and completely uncreative. So, let’s all give Stephenie Meyer a round of applause for writing one decent book and three crappy books and Summit Entertainment for turning those books into one okay movie and four increasingly bad sequels that inspired a legion of writers and studios to emulate them with a lot of hastily written crap and even worse film adaptations. Seriously, clap – they make some of my reviews really easy (and fun) to write.

In all fairness, I get that a lot of children like those supernatural books, regardless of how poorly they are written. For some reason besides good storytelling, they can’t get enough of them and I’m okay with that. The books that interest me the most are the dystopian future, action/thrillers, or science fiction books and, yes, there are plenty of those that are just as poorly written. This brings me to our subject movie, The Maze Runner – another dystopian future (or post-apocalypse, if you like) book and also one that I haven’t read yet. I’ll find out soon enough if the book is worth reading (it’s next on my list), but the only thing I knew about it prior to watching the film is that a teenager was going to run through a maze. This actually fit will into my current philosophy of having zero expectations going the slate of fall movies. Having said that, my expectations were actually set pretty low considering the recent spate of shitty YA adaptations. And, no, I didn’t see The Fault in Our Stars. Whatever.

Considering my cynicism of YA movies, you should know that I had to make a choice to screen The Maze Runner or A Walk Among the Tombstones (the latest Liam-Neeson-kicks-everyone’s-ass movie) because they were screening at the same time. I chose the former because (1) I’ve loved mazes and labyrinths since I was little kid and (2) the floor and ceiling of a YA adaptation is much further apart than a Neeson action flick. While I’m sure the Neeson flick was probably decent, I’m happy to say that The Maze Runner far exceeded my undeservedly low expectations.

The Maze Runner begins by showing us our main character, Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), waking up in an ascending elevator with amnesia. When the elevator stops, he is greeted by a group of young men in the center of a glade surrounded by giant stone walls. They explain to him that they all have amnesia as well, though can still remember their names. They also tell him that for three years, a new boy has risen in the elevator (along with supplies) once a month and that the walls form the center of an enormous maze. For those three years, they have sent runners through the maze to find a way out, but still have not found the exit, that the maze entrance opens every morning and closes every night, and that nobody has ever survived a night in the maze. As we meet various characters of the group, you can see similarities to Lord of the Flies, though nobody is going to drop a boulder on fat and nerdy Chuck (Blake Cooper). Thomas has an immediate interest in the maze, as do we, but the film makes us wait awhile before we actually get to see more than just the entrance from the glade. Like Thomas, we have to be patient and that means sitting through explanations of their little society while they simply tell us things about the maze. After a little while, the movie picks it up a notch when one of the runners come back “stung.” We later find out that the sting was from a griever – a thing that turns out to be some kind of cybernetic spider – and the runner is infected with some kind of disease. The leader of the group, Alby (Aml Ameen) goes into the maze the next day, is also stung, and Thomas runs in to help him (and Minho – Ki Hong Lee), as the entrance is closing. Finally, we get to see the maze and it’s almost worth the wait.

In this first real look at the maze, we meet a griever and see some of the layout first hand. If you are expecting anything even remotely as imaginative as the Labyrinth, you will be very disappointed. There are walls and vines, but you don’t get to see any of the shifting walls and passages that the boys mentioned earlier, there is no Bog of Eternal Stench, and David Bowie is nowhere to be found. Obviously, Thomas and friends will survive the night (and the griever) or this would be a very short and pointless movie. When they return to the glade the next morning, more things go wrong, the first girl shows up (Teresa – Kaya Scodelario), they go back into the maze a couple more times, the big why is revealed and we are left hanging because of course this is the first book in the trilogy.

For me, I was both pleased and disappointed in the film. I was disappointed because I really wanted the maze to be more than what it turned out to be. It’s worth noting that (in the movie at least) the maze almost doesn’t matter, which might actually explain why it ended up being so vanilla. It’s also very inconsistent – they tell us that the maze changes every night, but then show us a complete map of the maze created by the runners. They tell us that nobody has ever survived an encounter with a griever, yet are well familiar with their stings and their aftermaths. When they reveal the reason why the boys were put in the maze in the first place, you will question why the grievers exist at all. I’m sure the book has a lot more detail and the sequels will answer more questions, but it seems like maze was given far too little attention.

On the flip side, I was pleased because the movie did a very good job of building an intriguing story with intriguing questions and then answering some of those questions. It flows really well and develops the characters through the dynamics of the group. They also tell you about the larger world outside the maze and fit everything you see into that world by the end of the film. In fact, if you saw Divergent, you know exactly what I’m talking about – Divergent refuses to even acknowledge the bigger world (at least until book 3) and makes you wonder why you should care about anything that is going on. The Maze Runner does exactly the opposite – you will care about the characters and what happens to them, even poor Piggy, er, I mean Chuck.

Rating: I’m as surprised as you that this movie is worth your money. It’s no Hunger Games or Labyrinth, but it’s at least in the ball park.

“The Drop” – Now you can rest in peace, James.

Can you imagine if the last movie we saw featuring the late James Gandolfini was Enough Said – a romantic comedy? I didn’t see the movie myself – and judging by the box office, neither did you – but the critics loved it and it garnered several award nominations, though zero Oscars. But come on, nobody wants to remember Gandolfini in a cutesy date movie much like nobody wants to remember that Michael Jordan finished his career with the Washington Wizards. They want to remember Gandolfini as a Soprano, or at least some kind of organized criminal. Thankfully, somebody out there was wise enough to make his last release The Drop – a movie in which he gets to say “fuck” enough times to make you think you might actually be watching a lost episode of The Sopranos.

As I said in my review of The November Man, this time of year lacks talked-about movies and is a graveyard for medium-to-low budget flicks that studios have no faith in. So, imagine my surprise to find that not only was The Drop good, but it was nearly flawless. My friend and I discussed the film at length on the drive home and, with the exception of an ending that felt like a last minute thrown in and cop out, we couldn’t find any obvious problem with the movie. It’s exactly the kind of movie that any actor would love to be their last.

(Mild SPOILERS ahead with zero cussing.)

The movie starts out by telling us that a river of dirty money exchanges hands in Brooklyn every night and that the crime bosses choose random bars to move the money – referred to as drops. Now, you might think that Gandolfini is the main character in this movie by my earlier words, but it’s actually Tom Hardy. Hardy plays Bob, a bartender at a local bar run by his cousin, Marv (Gandolfini). The plot of the movie revolves around a plot to steal one of the drops, but the characters are the most interesting part of movie. Excellent development of the characters moves the plot forward, so let’s take a look at them.

Marv is a former crime boss (we’re never sure how big) that was pushed out by a group of Chechens who took over his bar nearly ten years earlier. Now, he still runs the bar, but is nothing more than a bar manager forced to pay money to the Chechens’ racketeering and protection scheme. When two guys rob the bar, he keeps his head and just hands them the money, which doesn’t fit anything we know about Gandolfini characters. He is disgruntled about his lot in life and is susceptible to reckless decisions, as Bob will later fill us in on. If you’ve seen the previews, you know that Marv is planning something and it’s exactly the kind of thing we want Gandolfini characters to do.

Speaking of Bob, he is the most interesting character in the film, as he should be. He’s a simple guy who lives by himself and tends to the bar. He is initially presented as simple-minded, but it becomes apparent that he might actually be the brains in his partnership with Marv. For Bob, everything is black and white. Anyone who beats a dog or a woman is a punk, dogs are difficult to take care of, and bodies or body parts must be properly disposed of. This is most apparent when, after the bar is robbed, the arm of one of the bandits is left hanging on a fence outside the bar with the money that was stolen. Marv asks what was the intention of leaving the money with the arm and Bob simply answers “I think they intend us to return it to them.” See what I mean? Simple.

Nadia (Noome Rapace) lives near Bob. She enters the movie when Bob finds an abused dog whimpering in her trash can. Bob insists she help with the dog and the two form a bond over the poor dog. Nadia has her secrets (as does Bob) and is as reserved as Bob, but the two of them open each other up over the course of the movie. Nadia also has a crazy ex-boyfriend who is responsible for beating and leaving the dog (to get her attention) and targets Bob as a threat when he sees the two of them together.

Crazy ex-boyfriend, Eric (Matthias Schoenaerts), is believed to have killed a guy right around the time Marv lost the bar and pops up more and more as the movie wears on. At first, he is just a creepy stalker guy, but he slips into the larger plot as all of the events and history start connecting as the movie builds. You will hate this guy, not the least because he steals Bob’s umbrella just before a rainstorm. That’s just wrong.

Detective Torres (John Ortiz) is in charge of investigating the initial robbery of the bar. He attends the same church as Bob, is upset that the church is closing, and is far too interested in the fact that Bob never takes communion at mass. If there’s a weak character, he’s it. I was never quite sure what role he would play and he never really figures into the plot. His job seems to be to figure out mysteries and clues just after they are revealed to the audience. He doesn’t figure into the climax, but does get to deliver the best line of the movie near the end.

Everyone else includes Marv’s sister, the head Chechen mobster, a priest, a second detective and the two guys that perpetrate the initial robbery. They all get lines, but are really inconsequential, except the Chechen guy. He’s like a James Bond villain without a cool (goofy?) quirk, but a willingness to nail people’s legs to cargo vans. He’s sufficiently intimidating and you can see Marv’s fear and loathing every time the guy shows up.

What I found impressive with the story is how well all of these characters meld into the story unfolding throughout the film. The development was very well done and was the key component to the slow build of the drama and tension leading to the climax. You feel sorry for Bob and hope nothing bad happens to him, but slowly notice that there’s more to him than just a bartender. You root for Bob and Nadia to come together because they both seem like people who need another person in their life who isn’t crazy or reckless. You hate Eric because he beats dogs and steals umbrellas and just won’t leave Bob alone. You want to feel bad for Marv, but you can’t because he’s kind of a dick to his sister and Bob who are only guilty of looking out for Marv. You like the dog because oohhh, little puppy is just so cute.

My point is that this movie is definitely one of my top five of the year because the story and characters are so well done that you don’t even want to eat your popcorn or sip your drink because you might have to look away to do that. But, if there’s one thing that makes this movie stand out is how awesome Hardy’s performance was. I’m not the best person to be judging performances, but even I know that Hardy deserves an Oscar for this. Gandolfini can rest easy knowing that Hardy made this movie a great one for Gandolfini to go out on.

Rating: If you ask for any money back, Gandolfini will haunt you and it won’t be the cuddly Gandolfini from Enough Said.