The Equalizer (2014) - 4K UHD Review

Review:

*Originally written December 12th, 2018*

After seeing The Equalizer 2 I was worried that it might impact my opinion of the original Equalizer, a film I'd always quite liked, despite it's problems. After stupidly buying the 4K steelbook for the second film, I realised I had yet to own this on 4K, so here we are. I was pretty pleased to discover that despite it's problems, The Equalizer is still very solid, violent and stylish action film in its own right.

Antoine Fuqua is a director that gets a lot of flack in my opinion. It's true his career peaked over a decade ago with the excellent Training Day, but ever since then he's released a series of solid action films that arguably take themselves far too seriously, but they're all great fun for the most part. In fact the only film I've never liked of his is Brooklyn's Finest, but I'm far due a rewatch on that. 

Anyone, The Equalizer is the Hollywood reboot of some '80s TV show I've never watched. It's Denzel Washington as an ex-special ops, OCD, lonely and highly capable man who gets involved in taking down the Russian mob after he avenges the brutal beating of a teenage prostitute. It's basic, surface level stuff that really doesn't earn its bloated run-time.

The biggest problems here are its length and over-seriousness of what an absurd, cliched plot this is. Denzel's Robert McCall is well developed and we learn just enough about him through visual cues and the way he acts, but sometimes the dialogue just tries so hard to sound meaningful, but can just come off as a little pretentious. It's a dumb action film that desperately doesn't what to be one. Which is actually most of Antoine Fuqua's career thinking about it.

Denzel does manage to make this work though. He plays bad-ass pretty effortlessly, much like he has through his entire career and he has enough to work with to make McCall feel like a real human being despite the moments of highly stylised action. I kinda just wish the script was a little tighter and more focused and decided whether it wanted to be a dumb action film or a character piece, but instead we get a messy mix of both. 

I think that's where the tone clashes the most is within the action scenes. This wants to be a real human drama about a man sticking up for the people who can't defend themselves, but then descends into becoming a borderline superhero film when McCall's Sherlock Holmes like powers come into play. Part of me really likes the brief moments of McCall's ridiculous powers, but then I sort of hate them for blatantly ripping of the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes thing he does much better.

 When it's not ripping off Ritchie's style, Fuqua really brings some insane brutality to the action. I forgot how nasty some of this film was and it was nice to it finally uncut in the UK in the now 18 rated 4K (Which is a great transfer too. With a film this dark, the HDR really helped make the night scenes more detailed and easier to make it while retained a gorgeous dark look). 

It's also refreshing to see an action film that takes a more creative approach to its violence. The finale in the home depot store is glorious and turns McCall into a slasher film villain as he brutally wipes out a squad of mercenaries using DIY equipment and setting up a series of demented, Home Alone style traps. We also get to see the biggest douchebag in the world Dan Bilzerian get lynched by barbed wire while we slowly watch him bleed and get choked out. Beautiful.


It's a slow burn to get to the action scenes for the most part, but it's definitely worth it for the most part. I just feel there's an excellent film here if it was just a bit more focused and cut down by a good 20 minutes or so. For better or worse it's another solid action film from Antoine Fuqua and seeing Denzel slaughter faceless Russians in increasingly brutal ways is always fun to watch. I just wish the sequel was as entertaining as this one.

7/10 Dans

The Equalizer is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
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Kick-Ass 2 (2013) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written January 26th, 2016*

"Balls to the Wall"

If you know me, then you'll probably know that Kick-Ass is my number one film of all-time. I really liked this sequel when it first released in 2013 (3 years ago. Jesus), but on countless rewatches I've come to accept that this really isn't that good. Don't get me wrong, I still mostly enjoy it, but my word, it is a mess. I guess this is where the whole best vs favourite thing comes into play? 

After Kick-Ass's antics in the first film he has retired and dozens of other citizens have become makeshift vigilantes like he was. Bored of his mundane life he decides to come out of retirement, while at the same time Red Mist comes back for revenge re-masked as a super-villain called 'The Motherfucker' with a gang of villains he calls 'The Toxic Mega-Cunts'.

The  characters are still all as likeable as they are from the first film, and they certainly provide a heart and emotional core for the sequel. The biggest problem is with the direction and the screenplay. The Kick-Ass trilogy is one of the very few comic-book series I've bothered to read and I enjoyed the second instalment, but this adaption really tones down the content. The stuff in the comic would have been far too much for a light-hearted film due to the child murder, dog decapitation and gang rape, so it was probably for the best this was all cut out. Saying that, they replaced all these brutal and violent scenes with scenes that made the villain seem like a joke and not much of a threat at all. Christopher Mintz-Plasse still does a great job and has some great comedic chops, but he just doesn't make for a lead villain. It worked in the first one as he was his father's lackey, but he really fails to step into his shoes.

Matthew Vaughn didn't return to the directors chair this time, and it really shows. He was replaced by who I like to call a "talentless hack" Jeff Wadlow, while the film is really colourful and those colours really pop, it just overall feels cheap and lower budget, despite being made for more money than the first. Wadlow directs the action scenes with horrific shakey-cam at times, despite actually creating some good set-pieces with Mother Russia's cop killing rampage and Hit-Girl's return on the van. It was just a shame nothing comes anywhere near close to the perfection of the Strobe Scene from the first. The tone is also really inconsistent, the film constantly reminds us that this is "real life", but then we get scenes so ludicrously unrealistic and stylised that they seem like something out of Scott Pilgrim.

Most of the music is just remixed from the first film, which wasn't bad. I really did like a lot of the new tracks. I just wished John Murphy returned to compose the music. Strangely enough he hasn't done music for a film since the original Kick-Ass. I will say the music used in the film that isn't the score is brutal, filled with lame and generic pop music. There was even a bizarre scene that promoted Union J. Awful.

Speaking of awful, there are a ton of awful moments, mostly involving anything with Chloe Grace Moretz's Mindy when she isn't Hit-Girl. Moretz does a great job and bring heart to the role, but what they did with her character is brutal. The whole middle of the film is her trying to fit in to normal life and it is so lame and uninteresting and it all wraps up with a juvenile and deeply childish scene involving what is called a "sick stick". I didn't even feel like I was watching a Kick-Ass film during most this stuff, it felt like a more crude Mean Girls.

All the stuff with Kick-Ass is a lot more fun, despite Aaron Taylor-Johnson's performance actually being a bit worse than the previous film. The scene in the back of van towards the end just shows how little he was trying. Aside from that, all the scenes with him and Justice Forever is a joy to watch. Jim Carey steals the show with his small role as the leader of the gang, honestly, this must be his most enjoyable role since the '90s.

With all the shortcomings, I still did really like overall theme and message the film carries from the first one, the whole "Anyone can be a hero" thing, I like it, and it's true. Also, despite the execution, I still find Kick-Ass 2 a hell of a lot more interesting than most of the Marvel films. Maybe it's just because I'm childish and enjoy violence, but I have a lot more fun with these films and care about the characters more than I do with anything Marvel has yet to make.


Kick-Ass 2 is a lesser version of the first in pretty much every way, but it still has its moments, likeable characters and fun action scenes. It's just a shame that it didn't have a better writer and director because this could have ended up great. I hope Kick-Ass 3 does finally happen, as this franchise deserves a real ending, a real ending in the hands of Matthew Vaughn or someone more capable than the talentless hack Jeff Wadlow.

6/10 Dans

Kick-Ass 2 is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
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Kick-Ass (2010) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written September 4th, 2015*

"Show's over, motherfuckers"

Anyone who knows me will be surprised it took me 413 films to get to Kick-Ass. I watched the inferior, but still OK sequel at the beginning of the year, but I held off on re-watching this. Back when I was 13 in 2010, this film was all the rage and I fell in love with it, because I wasn't old enough to see it at the cinema and I wanted to see it so badly, I learned how to use torrents to see it. For some reason there was a DVD quality download back when it was in cinemas? Weird. I made my friends watch this film several times till they hated it, which was my fault, but ah well. This film was my life through my teens.

This was my favourite film for years, before getting dethroned by Fight Club, but guess fucking what. After watching it again, Kick-Ass has re earned its place as my number one of all-time. I thought the law of diminishing returns would take effect on this film after watching it nearly 30 times it must be by now? Easily over 20, but I still get the same joy and I did from watching it for the first time, apart from some iffy special effects due to the low budget and the CGI blood, everything in Kick-Ass is beautiful. 

Matthew Vaughn's style is colourful and gorgeous, his action scenes pack an emotional and artistic punch. That Strobe scene is still my favourite scene in any film ever and while most grown men have the thumbs up in the lava scene from Terminator 2, I have Kick-Ass's strobe scene. It is a thing of beauty, it packed an insane emotional punch that I never thought could be possible from a film like this. John Murphy's remix of Surface of the Sun from Danny Boyle's Sunshine is utterly gorgeous and fits the scene perfectly.

The performances are all excellent, Nicolas Cage gives his best performance in the past 15 years as the Batman wannabe vigilante father that impersonates Adam West's Batman, but becomes him own thing in an awesome action scene set in a warehouse. Aaron-Taylor Johnson who is pretty bland in everything else but this also gives a great performance, brilliantly capturing that every day geek who tries to become a realistic superhero, but fails miserably.

You all know who the real stand-out is of Kick-Ass though, I don't want to hyperbole here, but Chloe Grace Moretz gives what might be the best child performance ever in film history as the scene stealing Hit-Girl. The 12 year old is responsible for the body-count of about 50 people in the run-time and each action scene in memorable and insanely enjoyable. The father daughter relationship between Hit-Girl and Nicolas Cage's Big-Daddy is one of the most endearing and heartbreaking things I've ever seen. I don't usually relate emotionally to any film, but here just meshes together perfectly for me.


I'm completely biased about Kick-Ass, but I'm not even going to pretend i don't love everything about it and after a tiny bit of thinking, I would only be lying to myself if I didn't say this was my favourite film ever. I've seen and loved it dozens of times and I'm going to watch and love it dozens of times more.

10/10 Dans

Kick-Ass is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
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