Latest / Houselights: A Film Director Podcast / The Equalizer (2014) - Antoine Fuqua | Houselights #244

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The Equalizer (2014) - Antoine Fuqua | Houselights #244 · Houselights: A Film Director Podcast

0:03
Speaker 1: Welcome to the NED party.
0:20
Speaker 2: You have entered once again into the House of Fuquah.
0:24
Speaker 2: Here the latest saga exploring the works of a director,
0:28
Speaker 2: this one being Antoine Fuquah. Welcome as we continue this
0:32
Speaker 2: exploration with The Equalizer, a re teeming of Denzel Washington
0:38
Speaker 2: with Antoine Fuquah, a teaming we're familiar with from our
0:41
Speaker 2: discussion about Training Day last week. And who is the
0:43
Speaker 2: we here? Well, Gosh, I am John the Equalizer of
0:48
Speaker 2: this podcast, and I'm joined by the two dirty Cops,
0:52
Speaker 2: Tristan Medell and Darren Moser, who I insist must pay
0:55
Speaker 2: you back with a quality piece of entertainment discussing this
1:00
Speaker 2: film to make up for burning your kitchen. So, gentlemen,
1:03
Speaker 2: here we are at the Action powerhouse film The Equalizer.
1:08
Speaker 2: It was released in twenty fourteen, and it was a
1:12
Speaker 2: rebirth in many ways because it was based loosely on
1:18
Speaker 2: a TV show of the same name from the nineteen
1:20
Speaker 2: eighties that yours truly might have grown up watching. And
1:24
Speaker 2: I can say that, you know, I did not go
1:28
Speaker 2: see this in the theater because I was one of
1:31
Speaker 2: those people that was like, how can you remix the Equalizer?
1:34
Speaker 2: That's a take for TV show. I was going through
1:36
Speaker 2: one of those phases as so many of us do. But, gentlemen,
1:40
Speaker 2: what was your first encounter? I will kick off with you, Darren.
1:43
Speaker 2: Your first encounter was The Equalizer here on House Life.
1:47
Speaker 3: You're not gonna like it because it's going to feel
1:49
Speaker 3: very modern and terrible. Because if you asked me if
1:53
Speaker 3: I had seen this movie, the answer would be no,
1:56
Speaker 3: and also yes, this is I'm pretty sure I did
2:01
Speaker 3: not ever sit down and watch, but I came across
2:05
Speaker 3: like a series of reels online that were like best
2:09
Speaker 3: little bits of the Equalizer. So I'd seen lots of
2:12
Speaker 3: little bits, not really knowing what Denzil movie this was from,
2:16
Speaker 3: because obviously I recognized him. So that's the level of
2:20
Speaker 3: engagement I had when I sat down to watch it
2:23
Speaker 3: this weekend and it all clicked. I'm like, oh, this
2:27
Speaker 3: is the movie that you know, the not Home Depot
2:31
Speaker 3: attack is happening at and all of that. So I
2:37
Speaker 3: won't say it spoiled it because I hadn't remembered those
2:42
Speaker 3: scenes enough to have it all fled back. But as
2:46
Speaker 3: they each came up, it was like, Okay, there's this one,
2:49
Speaker 3: but I had the whole plot now, like there's nothing
2:52
Speaker 3: of the diner and the best of clips, you know,
2:56
Speaker 3: you don't know what's happening there, although when he turns
2:59
Speaker 3: off the line as the as the you know van
3:02
Speaker 3: goes by is a great shot in moment. So all
3:06
Speaker 3: that to say, this was really my first time on
3:08
Speaker 3: seeing the story, and yeah, I want to say overall
3:13
Speaker 3: this movie is a great does a great job of
3:17
Speaker 3: showing and not telling, especially when it doesn't even show,
3:23
Speaker 3: like like the moment where he takes the hammer and
3:26
Speaker 3: like the next shot is him coming back and putting
3:28
Speaker 3: it away as he wipes it off. You don't even
3:31
Speaker 3: know what happened to that guy specifically, but you know
3:35
Speaker 3: what you do, Yeah, you do.
3:37
Speaker 2: So you're giving context clues as they might are.
3:41
Speaker 3: Yes, And honestly, we don't need to see the exact
3:45
Speaker 3: of that. Anything we could think of is like we're
3:48
Speaker 3: just like, oh that he's dead, like and he had
3:51
Speaker 3: it coming and it was very painful and and he
3:55
Speaker 3: got the ring back. That is all that matters.
3:58
Speaker 2: So respecting personal property is in important. You really you
4:01
Speaker 2: need to. You need to keep in mind that when
4:03
Speaker 2: a man cares about something, he's going to care about
4:06
Speaker 2: it deeply. So Tristan, your first encounter with the Equalizer?
4:11
Speaker 2: Did you did well? I need to know. Did your
4:14
Speaker 2: father have old videotapes of Edward Woodward as the Equalizer
4:19
Speaker 2: and he showed them to you to prep for this film.
4:22
Speaker 4: I was interesting because when we started talking about doing
4:24
Speaker 4: Fuquah the House of Fuquah, and we started talking about
4:27
Speaker 4: which movies we were going to tackle, and we decided
4:30
Speaker 4: to do the order that we're doing. And you brought
4:33
Speaker 4: up that The Equalizer was a TV show And I
4:36
Speaker 4: said to you, what when I had literally never heard
4:42
Speaker 4: about it ever, not a passing reference, not an ad,
4:48
Speaker 4: not a something a blockbuster or not an old TV guide, nothing, nothing.
4:54
Speaker 4: So I had no idea that this existed. But actually,
4:57
Speaker 4: in doing research for this podcast, I did see that
5:00
Speaker 4: there are a lot of homages to the TV show.
5:03
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, within the movie. Oh yes, yes there are.
5:06
Speaker 2: It is It's very see. What I think is very
5:09
Speaker 2: cool about it is that Fuquah takes the care to
5:12
Speaker 2: bake those homages in without calling specific attention to them.
5:16
Speaker 2: There's no moment as somebody who grew up watching the show.
5:19
Speaker 2: And I mean I listen, I'm not like four hundred
5:22
Speaker 2: years old. I was a kid when the show was on.
5:24
Speaker 2: But there are little things baked in that every so
5:27
Speaker 2: often somebody would point out and be like, oh yeah,
5:29
Speaker 2: that's the car from the show. Is like, oh yeah,
5:32
Speaker 2: I remember that. Like that sort of thing as opposed
5:35
Speaker 2: to like a hit you over the head with a
5:37
Speaker 2: hammer and wipe it off sort of homage reference that
5:40
Speaker 2: you might get. So this movie comes out to you know,
5:45
Speaker 2: I would say casting Denzel is a surprising move. This
5:50
Speaker 2: isn't necessarily a role that before he was in it,
5:53
Speaker 2: I would have expected Denzel Washington to inhabit. This isn't
5:58
Speaker 2: the type of role that really jumps out in the
6:02
Speaker 2: Denzel Washington body of work necessarily.
6:05
Speaker 4: Of the other are the avenging age had you not
6:07
Speaker 4: seen Man on Fire?
6:08
Speaker 2: I had not seen Man on Fire at that point,
6:10
Speaker 2: and unfortunately many people had not seen Man Man on
6:14
Speaker 2: Fire by this point. So you know, give and take
6:17
Speaker 2: there on that one. Give me a break. You know,
6:19
Speaker 2: for a fact, I hadn't seen Man on Fire.
6:21
Speaker 4: But I just know I forgott until you mentioned it.
6:23
Speaker 4: I did. I forgot that because I just want to
6:26
Speaker 4: say that, like, watching this, I'm like, y, do you
6:28
Speaker 4: know who else was a big fan of men on fire,
6:30
Speaker 4: Antoine Fuqua.
6:32
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and but but that's the thing is overall,
6:37
Speaker 2: you don't really see Denzel Washington as a John Wick
6:40
Speaker 2: style avenger of wrongs. Uh, but Darren, you go in,
6:46
Speaker 2: Denzel's not a young man when this comes out. But
6:49
Speaker 2: you know, he's not like ready for retirement or anything,
6:51
Speaker 2: but he's not a young man. Did you have any
6:55
Speaker 2: trouble believing Denzel when he was in those moments being
7:00
Speaker 2: the action star that he needed to be. Did you
7:03
Speaker 2: ever have a moment where you said, I don't really
7:05
Speaker 2: buy this.
7:07
Speaker 3: No, I really was fully on board with this character.
7:12
Speaker 3: And maybe it was the watch, the fact that he's
7:16
Speaker 3: kind of almost setting up his you know, oh, my
7:19
Speaker 3: personal best in this situation is sixteen seconds or aka,
7:24
Speaker 3: I have about sixteen seconds of old man energy to
7:26
Speaker 3: take out these punks, and I better you know, tomize
7:30
Speaker 3: my attack. So again, we don't see flashbacks of his
7:34
Speaker 3: glory days. We don't see a lot of the pieces.
7:38
Speaker 3: There's a lot of subtlety of again you know, not
7:42
Speaker 3: not telling, but you can tell that this is a
7:46
Speaker 3: dangerous man, and they really portrayed it, I think very
7:51
Speaker 3: convincingly that yeah, I totally buy every moment. He's very smart,
7:57
Speaker 3: he's very surgical. It's not a gun's blazing.
8:02
Speaker 2: You know.
8:02
Speaker 3: He actually rarely.
8:04
Speaker 2: Kills with the gun.
8:05
Speaker 3: He kills with the real gun, or that he kills
8:07
Speaker 3: with the gun.
8:08
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I was.
8:10
Speaker 4: He never kills anybody with a gun except for except
8:13
Speaker 4: for the first guy. Well like when he's when he's
8:16
Speaker 4: holding that's he's actually making the other guy fire the gun.
8:20
Speaker 3: Oh I see he's co opting someone else's gun.
8:23
Speaker 4: Yeah.
8:24
Speaker 2: So yeah.
8:25
Speaker 4: Also, I just technically.
8:26
Speaker 3: He pulled the trigger under my finger, so technically I
8:30
Speaker 3: I didn't shoot him.
8:32
Speaker 4: We can't skip over the genius that Darren just dropped
8:37
Speaker 4: because I need to use sixteen seconds of old man
8:40
Speaker 4: energy somewhere somehow. I don't know if it's gonna be
8:44
Speaker 4: the title of my autobiography. It's I don't know if
8:47
Speaker 4: I'm gonna have to wait that long, but it's gonna be.
8:49
Speaker 4: I'm gonna use that somehow. I'm stealing that darm No.
8:52
Speaker 3: That was that was a great and then he like
8:54
Speaker 3: overshot it. He's like, oh I was like nineteen seconds slower. Okay,
8:58
Speaker 3: I get work to improve, Denzel, work to improve, you know,
9:02
Speaker 3: but no, so I I think, yeah, they they nailed
9:07
Speaker 3: that part of the character. I felt like this was
9:10
Speaker 3: a guy who's seen some stuff and done some stuff.
9:15
Speaker 3: So I was fully on board with that past coming out.
9:20
Speaker 2: And we've seen that. It's a trope.
9:22
Speaker 3: We've seen that so many times. It's Rocky, it's you know,
9:26
Speaker 3: so many other things where they have a side to
9:29
Speaker 3: them that is shaped by war and conflict and they
9:33
Speaker 3: just want peace and they bring that out into the forefront.
9:37
Speaker 3: I'm not saying this is a copy of Rocky or
9:39
Speaker 3: something like that, you know, the main character that has
9:42
Speaker 3: a You're right, too many I'm visualizing Rambo. And both
9:50
Speaker 3: John and I were like, what Rambo in a box? Rockey,
9:54
Speaker 3: It's a movie I might want to see. I'm just
9:57
Speaker 3: they're played by the same actor. Okay, so I will
10:00
Speaker 3: mix and he also and they both begin with R.
10:03
Speaker 2: He also played Kobreddy. But you're not throwing Cobra around.
10:07
Speaker 3: I'm going to blank that movie out. But yes, so Rambo,
10:10
Speaker 3: That's what I totally said. Guys, yeah, that person with
10:14
Speaker 3: a past. So I was digging it.
10:17
Speaker 2: So Tristan, you know something you you drew attention to
10:21
Speaker 2: was Darren you know, Haha. The sixteen seconds of old
10:25
Speaker 2: Man energy, But it's really the subtlety of it. There
10:28
Speaker 2: seems to be an economy that's built into the action scenes.
10:32
Speaker 2: It would have been very easy for somebody to have
10:36
Speaker 2: a stunt double come in and have super high energy
10:39
Speaker 2: action scenes in those fights. Do you think that it's
10:43
Speaker 2: effective to have somebody within economy of motion? Did it
10:47
Speaker 2: make it stand out as an action film in any
10:50
Speaker 2: way for you, in the way that Denzel inhabited it physically?
10:54
Speaker 4: Well, when this movie came out, we were at the
10:56
Speaker 4: peak of Shaky Kim and I feel like this was
11:01
Speaker 4: a nice respite from that, where if you looked at
11:04
Speaker 4: the cinematography, and I have a point I'm coming back
11:06
Speaker 4: to your question, but if you look at the cinematography
11:09
Speaker 4: of it, it's very classical in the way that it's shot.
11:14
Speaker 4: It's you see everything. There's no obfuscation. It's not whip
11:19
Speaker 4: there's no whippans, there's no extreme I mean, I was
11:23
Speaker 4: about to say extreme closeups, but there's a lot of
11:24
Speaker 4: extreme closeups, but there's there's nothing that's hiding the action.
11:29
Speaker 4: There's no green grass effect in this and I really
11:32
Speaker 4: appreciated that. And one of the one of the things
11:34
Speaker 4: that you you have to do when you shoot it
11:37
Speaker 4: that way is you have to make your action legible
11:42
Speaker 4: as well, because you can't just have frantic whaling when
11:45
Speaker 4: you can see everything's on screen. And so when you
11:48
Speaker 4: show that Denzel, because like right off the bat they
11:50
Speaker 4: show that Denzel is no spring chicken anymore. Like you
11:54
Speaker 4: you see him with gray hair at the very top
11:56
Speaker 4: of the movie and he's shaving it off, and it's
11:59
Speaker 4: to remind the audience that, like, Denzel is not ageless,
12:03
Speaker 4: even though we kind of picture him as as ageless,
12:06
Speaker 4: he's not. He's he's getting older. And I love that
12:10
Speaker 4: he said that he was a buck ninety one night,
12:11
Speaker 4: a buck ninety and I literally said out loud. I
12:14
Speaker 4: was like bs and what they called it out at
12:17
Speaker 4: the end. But regardless, I'm like, I think the action
12:21
Speaker 4: style was very refreshing for this type of movie, because
12:26
Speaker 4: when you have something that like John Wick that came
12:29
Speaker 4: out at the same time, like it's it's unrealistic gunfighting,
12:33
Speaker 4: and that's not a criticism, it's just is what it is.
12:36
Speaker 4: And this one went in a different direction where it's
12:38
Speaker 4: not Jason Bourne or Batman or anything like that, Like
12:41
Speaker 4: this is a guy who is trained to take out
12:43
Speaker 4: people as quickly and efficiently as possible. There's no flare
12:47
Speaker 4: to it, he just does it. And I think that
12:50
Speaker 4: was that mixed with the type of cinematography really benefited
12:54
Speaker 4: this picture.
12:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, and for the director of photography, it's Mario forat Fiore.
13:02
Speaker 2: I'm always going to mess up his last name. But
13:04
Speaker 2: he had worked with Fuquah on training Day. Between training
13:08
Speaker 2: Day and now, he had worked with Michael Bay on
13:10
Speaker 2: the Island. He had worked with Fuquah again on Tears
13:13
Speaker 2: of the Sun. He had worked well of course, famously
13:17
Speaker 2: wins an Oscar for his work on Avatar with James
13:20
Speaker 2: Cameron and comes back around to Fuquah eventually and does
13:25
Speaker 2: three in a row with Fuqua starting with this.
13:28
Speaker 4: And he also did Smoking Aces, And anybody who's seen
13:32
Speaker 4: that film knows that this cinematographer, like Fiori, knows how
13:38
Speaker 4: to do whippans, he knows how to do fastands, shaky
13:41
Speaker 4: camp because Smoking Aces is basically green grass on crack.
13:46
Speaker 2: But that's that's sort of what I'm building to, is it.
13:48
Speaker 2: I think it exhibits a real basically, it underlines the
13:52
Speaker 2: fact that it's a real choice of the director and
13:56
Speaker 2: the DP to say this is the style of this
13:59
Speaker 2: movie and we are going to stick to it, because
14:01
Speaker 2: it would have been so easy to fall back on, oh,
14:04
Speaker 2: I know how to shoot this. They obviously had conferences
14:07
Speaker 2: where they said, how are we going to break this down? Now?
14:10
Speaker 2: In terms of breaking things down, Darren, this movie is
14:14
Speaker 2: not an hour and a half. It takes its time
14:17
Speaker 2: getting where it's going. And my question to you, I
14:21
Speaker 2: usually toss this to Tristan first, but I'll toss it
14:24
Speaker 2: to you. Did you have any issue with the editing,
14:27
Speaker 2: with the pace of the film. Do you feel that
14:29
Speaker 2: it took the right amount of time to get where
14:31
Speaker 2: it was going or do you think that it took
14:32
Speaker 2: too long to get to where it was going?
14:36
Speaker 3: First, I just want to cap off what we said
14:37
Speaker 3: about Denzel's age. I just looked it up and at
14:40
Speaker 3: the time that this movie came out, he was sixty.
14:43
Speaker 3: That is incredible.
14:46
Speaker 2: But yes, hey, I'm not that far off from it.
14:50
Speaker 3: I'm just saying I'm just he did a great job.
14:53
Speaker 2: I feel Prinzil But yeah, with the I don't know.
15:00
Speaker 3: I'm probably not the best one to answer this because
15:03
Speaker 3: I just because of my schedule ended up watching this
15:06
Speaker 3: in two chunks. Anyway, I didn't have the full time
15:09
Speaker 3: to sit down, so I had a break in the middle,
15:12
Speaker 3: but nothing jumped out. It is a bit of a
15:18
Speaker 3: slow burn before we get to you know, but kicking
15:21
Speaker 3: Denzel like a while goes into this and even set
15:27
Speaker 3: up for the bad guy, you know it. I mean,
15:30
Speaker 3: I think if I had to describe it in one word,
15:32
Speaker 3: it is slow burn.
15:33
Speaker 2: It is definitely that it is. It's one hundred and
15:36
Speaker 2: thirty two minutes and I.
15:39
Speaker 3: Think this built every single one of them.
15:42
Speaker 2: Well, I mean the first action see the first action
15:45
Speaker 2: sequence is about thirty minutes in. I think it ends.
15:48
Speaker 2: The first action sequence ends around thirty two or thirty
15:51
Speaker 2: three minutes into the film. And so Tristan, you know,
15:55
Speaker 2: let's knock it over to you. You love to talk
15:58
Speaker 2: about editing, and I think it's all you love to
16:01
Speaker 2: talk about. I think this is the only reason you
16:03
Speaker 2: podcast on this show. But did you you felt every
16:07
Speaker 2: second of this? Did you sit there watching this criticiz like,
16:10
Speaker 2: what were you going in your head saying, okay, cut this,
16:13
Speaker 2: chop that or was it more in retrospect?
16:16
Speaker 4: No, it was it was like as I was watching it.
16:18
Speaker 4: I was just like, oh, good lord, no, get rid
16:20
Speaker 4: of this scene, get rid of this take cut this down.
16:25
Speaker 4: I was. I was fine with a slow burn at
16:27
Speaker 4: the beginning. I really was, Like when you mentioned that
16:29
Speaker 4: the first action scene wasn't until half an hour in,
16:31
Speaker 4: I was like, okay, all right, cool, all right. I
16:35
Speaker 4: was just kind of like trying to vibe with it,
16:36
Speaker 4: just like, all right, it's a slow burn. It's cool.
16:39
Speaker 4: We're doing a lot of character work, we're building the world,
16:42
Speaker 4: we're building him. I was fine with it. But then
16:46
Speaker 4: towards the end of the second act, I was just
16:50
Speaker 4: crawling out of my skin. I was like, good lord,
16:54
Speaker 4: I have so much left of this movie. And then
16:57
Speaker 4: when I finished it, like I yelled at my my
17:00
Speaker 4: wife didn't watch it with me. She was off doing
17:02
Speaker 4: something else and the kids weren't home so I could
17:04
Speaker 4: actually watch it without headphones. But like, at the end
17:08
Speaker 4: of this movie, I was like, good lord, this movie
17:11
Speaker 4: had no business being as long as it was no
17:14
Speaker 4: business Like you could, I say this without exaggeration, you
17:18
Speaker 4: could trim this down by half an hour easy.
17:22
Speaker 2: I don't know that I would agree about half an hour.
17:25
Speaker 4: I truly believe that, like you could get this at
17:28
Speaker 4: one forty five one point fifty, and I truly believe
17:32
Speaker 4: that that would be a primo. I think run Time could.
17:36
Speaker 2: But whether or not I should see.
17:38
Speaker 3: An aspect of this is the circling sharks of the
17:42
Speaker 3: two antagonists and protagonists as they draw closer to their
17:47
Speaker 3: final battle. And if you mess with that timing too much,
17:52
Speaker 3: see it shifts.
17:53
Speaker 4: It a bit.
17:54
Speaker 2: I get what you're saying, Tristan, I don't agree with
17:57
Speaker 2: it is the best way I get. I can put
17:59
Speaker 2: it specifically, becase cause of the fact that I know
18:02
Speaker 2: that if I were to look at this, say the
18:04
Speaker 2: way Soderberg looked at her, I'd be like, I can
18:07
Speaker 2: get this done in ninety minutes. Okay, we're gonna cut
18:09
Speaker 2: the kitchen burning seating, We're gonna cut the corrupt cops
18:12
Speaker 2: with one of the Wallbergers. We're gonna cut. We're gonna
18:13
Speaker 2: just gonna go down. We're just gonna But what I
18:16
Speaker 2: admire and respect about the movie is actually the fact
18:20
Speaker 2: that it sets up specifically why and how he expresses
18:24
Speaker 2: how he cares so much about certain people.
18:28
Speaker 4: I'm I might for that, I'm all for I really
18:31
Speaker 4: am to keep the opening, keep the first thirty minutes exactly.
18:34
Speaker 2: I'm not I'm not talking about just the opening. I'm
18:36
Speaker 2: talking about the guy who's going up for security guard.
18:39
Speaker 2: That it shows him not just expressing his love for
18:43
Speaker 2: somebody by kicking somebody's butt. He shows up and he said, oh,
18:46
Speaker 2: I'm gonna help clean up the kitchen. You see, this
18:49
Speaker 2: guy has this circle of people and he he loves
18:54
Speaker 2: and does everything for them, not just you know, vigilante
18:58
Speaker 2: justice sort of thing. Assuming that I would cut that,
19:02
Speaker 2: I am actually I am assuming because I don't. Well,
19:05
Speaker 2: then give me an example of what you would cut,
19:08
Speaker 2: because I wouldn't cut anything about the crazy mob guy
19:12
Speaker 2: going through and intimidating people and beating up irishman. And
19:15
Speaker 2: I wouldn't you know, you know, any of that stuff
19:18
Speaker 2: would be cut. Are you talking about you would simply
19:19
Speaker 2: cut in the back part of the movie?
19:22
Speaker 4: I would. I would completely remove the the robber at
19:28
Speaker 4: a at not home depot, Completely remove that storyline, excize
19:31
Speaker 4: it completely. There's no business for it being there. In fact,
19:34
Speaker 4: I think it actually was a detriment to the movie,
19:36
Speaker 4: not just because of its length. I actually had a
19:38
Speaker 4: problem with that scene because when he's you know, like
19:42
Speaker 4: when he confronts the mob. He's confronting the mob because
19:47
Speaker 4: a person that he cares about is in trouble and
19:49
Speaker 4: he wants to release her from the servitude. She's an
19:52
Speaker 4: underage prostitute who's basically in sex trafficking and she can't
19:58
Speaker 4: get out on own and she can't get out so
19:59
Speaker 4: she isn't sex trafficking, and and so he's trying to
20:02
Speaker 4: get her out like that, I get that, And then
20:04
Speaker 4: there and then the next scene was like dirty cops
20:08
Speaker 4: taking advantage of hardworking people, and him, as a former
20:11
Speaker 4: law enforcement you know person, you know that means something
20:15
Speaker 4: to him. Keep it, love it. But then when the
20:17
Speaker 4: when basically a tweaker comes and robs a woman at
20:21
Speaker 4: gunpoint and steals her ring, I feel like it's a
20:24
Speaker 4: step too far to when he like he's a vigilante already,
20:29
Speaker 4: but like it was a step too far because the
20:31
Speaker 4: danger was over, that woman was no longer in danger,
20:35
Speaker 4: she lost a ring. I'm sorry, crap happens. But then
20:38
Speaker 4: we're supposed to believe that because this guy was brutally
20:42
Speaker 4: murdered with a sledgehammer because he robbed a home depot,
20:46
Speaker 4: you know, like that, it took up time. It was
20:49
Speaker 4: confusing about the character because like at first, like my
20:53
Speaker 4: first reaction to it was, oh, damn, is this like
20:56
Speaker 4: Taxi Driver? Like is he like like the end of
20:59
Speaker 4: Taxi Driver where you're just like, oh, did he get
21:01
Speaker 4: a taste for this? He's just gonna look for more blood?
21:03
Speaker 4: Like is it no longer about the victim anymore? Is
21:06
Speaker 4: it just about the getting the quote unquote justice? Like
21:11
Speaker 4: So that scene was really confusing to me, and I
21:13
Speaker 4: think it was a detriment towards his character. And then
21:16
Speaker 4: like when we then as we move on from that,
21:19
Speaker 4: like I wouldn't really maybe I would. Mostly I would
21:23
Speaker 4: get rid of Kosca's murder of that poor girl that
21:27
Speaker 4: went on way too long. I would. I would excize
21:29
Speaker 4: it completely. I don't think it was necessary. We already
21:31
Speaker 4: know that he's a bad guy. He's an evil guy.
21:33
Speaker 4: But I would condense it a great deal if someone
21:36
Speaker 4: was like forcing me to keep it, and then from
21:38
Speaker 4: there on out, I would just trim scenes down. I
21:40
Speaker 4: would just condense, And I really I really think that
21:43
Speaker 4: you could, you could excise thirty twenty minutes minimum.
21:46
Speaker 2: I don't know that I would cut the not Home
21:52
Speaker 2: depot thing, just because I do think that there is
21:57
Speaker 2: a moment when he he takes his first you know,
22:02
Speaker 2: his first vengeance on the room full of guys, the
22:05
Speaker 2: twenty eight seconds of killing spree where he's sitting down
22:10
Speaker 2: and he's talking the guy through and about thirty seconds
22:12
Speaker 2: you're going to die and was this worth ninety eight
22:15
Speaker 2: hundred dollars? And he has a moment where he puts
22:18
Speaker 2: his head down and I forget exactly what he says,
22:19
Speaker 2: but he's like, he basically says something along the lines
22:22
Speaker 2: of like I'm sorry, Like you can see him. I
22:25
Speaker 2: think you're right. He basically, once he's turned on, that's
22:30
Speaker 2: just who he is going forward. And I think that
22:33
Speaker 2: does show that he the whole reason he doesn't want
22:37
Speaker 2: to get involved in it is because he knows what.
22:41
Speaker 2: Like when he goes to the door and he opens
22:43
Speaker 2: the door and he closes it, and he opens and
22:45
Speaker 2: he closes it, it's because he's sitting there he's like, what,
22:48
Speaker 2: I can't he can't operate, you know, flipping between states.
22:51
Speaker 2: It's once he's on, he's on. And I think that
22:55
Speaker 2: the movie maybe doesn't do a clear enough job of saying, well,
23:01
Speaker 2: this is where he goes too far. It just shows
23:03
Speaker 2: the guy has just entered that mode and he's just
23:06
Speaker 2: that's just who he's gonna be until the end. And
23:10
Speaker 2: like it, basically every time it gets tripped, it's just
23:12
Speaker 2: going to happen. But you know, maybe to your point,
23:15
Speaker 2: maybe that's where it lacks some clarity in terms of,
23:19
Speaker 2: you know, the where the character goes.
23:23
Speaker 3: Well, and I'll say, with you know, sledgehammer Guy or
23:26
Speaker 3: whatever we're gonna call him, it did feel a little
23:29
Speaker 3: contrived that in the background there was like a line
23:34
Speaker 3: thrown in there of or actually, no, it's standing in
23:36
Speaker 3: the background. It's Denzel says it where he's like, oh, yeah,
23:39
Speaker 3: the cops talked about this guy and he shot someone
23:41
Speaker 3: else and he's robbed other people. And it's like, oh,
23:44
Speaker 3: I see what you're doing. Story, you're justifying it, because
23:48
Speaker 3: if you had not had that line, it's straight up murder,
23:52
Speaker 3: like you're you're you're trying to ease it of like, oh, look,
23:57
Speaker 3: he's killed, he might kill again. You know, now we
24:00
Speaker 3: have a reason for our vigilante to step into action.
24:04
Speaker 3: I mean they even shoot that scene of him gearing
24:08
Speaker 3: up for an attack, and the only reason he aborts
24:11
Speaker 3: is because you know, a mom and daughter walk in
24:15
Speaker 3: like which you know raises whole other things, Like you know,
24:18
Speaker 3: imagine him straight up killing that guy right there at
24:21
Speaker 3: the register like that would have been a very different scene.
24:25
Speaker 2: It would have been a very different scene. I mean.
24:28
Speaker 2: The thing is, like I said, Tristan, it's it's not
24:31
Speaker 2: that I it's not that I don't understand what you're saying.
24:35
Speaker 2: Is that I just don't agree with it.
24:36
Speaker 4: Because that's cool, man, That's why we have this podcast.
24:39
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no no. I'm building
24:42
Speaker 2: to a point I betray this trust that we've built.
24:45
Speaker 2: See the thing is, now we're spoiling everything. That's no fun. No,
24:48
Speaker 2: I it's it's for the sake of a more direct
24:54
Speaker 2: sort of way. I think is have you ever seen
24:57
Speaker 2: the original Death Wish with Charles Bronson? Have either one
25:00
Speaker 2: of you seen that? Ages ago, ages ago? Now, it's
25:04
Speaker 2: not a good movie. I want to underline that. And
25:06
Speaker 2: there's actually one point wherein I consider him to be
25:09
Speaker 2: a reprehensible father. And I'm not going to even point
25:13
Speaker 2: people to the movie or reference the scene, but if
25:15
Speaker 2: you've seen it, I can tell you that you undoubtedly
25:18
Speaker 2: got the creepies during a certain moment where you're like, oh, dude,
25:22
Speaker 2: what are you doing talking to her like that? But
25:26
Speaker 2: this is more along the lines of a death wish,
25:29
Speaker 2: and I think that's the sort of thing where the
25:32
Speaker 2: entire thing operates as this guy's gone off the deep end,
25:37
Speaker 2: and so once he goes over the whole thing is
25:40
Speaker 2: at what point what will finally make him stop doing
25:43
Speaker 2: the thing that he's doing or will he learn to
25:46
Speaker 2: pull back? Either way? So not high marks for the editing,
25:51
Speaker 2: but did it destroy the suspense or not suspense? But
25:55
Speaker 2: did it destroy the vibe of the movie enough to
25:59
Speaker 2: work against the tension? And this is to U Tristi
26:02
Speaker 2: that Fuqua is trying to build in those scenes, Like
26:05
Speaker 2: was it something where by the end you just didn't
26:07
Speaker 2: get into the action because it had burned up all
26:11
Speaker 2: of its goodwill?
26:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, a little bit. Unfortunately, I feel like there was.
26:16
Speaker 4: It kind of took me out of it, like because
26:18
Speaker 4: it's so frustrated. As I was watching the latter half
26:22
Speaker 4: that I was, I was drawn into how overstylized some
26:27
Speaker 4: of the action scenes were, like when he destroys the
26:30
Speaker 4: ship and we have basically a nuclear bomb go off
26:35
Speaker 4: behind him. All I'm hearing is you know, like the
26:41
Speaker 4: is the Saturday Night Live people's singing like cool guys
26:44
Speaker 4: don't look at explosions, you know, Like it's such a
26:49
Speaker 4: massive explosion and he's just walked. He's sauntering through it
26:53
Speaker 4: in slow motion, on the edge of.
26:55
Speaker 3: The shockwave, Like, yeah, he's the edge.
26:59
Speaker 4: He he would go deaf, like he'd be blown to smither.
27:04
Speaker 4: Reads like this is not something that you walk away from,
27:07
Speaker 4: and so like it was shot in slow motion. And
27:09
Speaker 4: then also like when we get towards the end and
27:11
Speaker 4: he shoots Coskas with a with a nail gun and
27:14
Speaker 4: then like the sprinklers go off and it's in super
27:18
Speaker 4: slow motion for a very long time, and we're like, yes,
27:22
Speaker 4: that's a really cool epic shot of him in the water.
27:26
Speaker 4: I get it. But he I think it was Fuquan
27:30
Speaker 4: not knowing when to cut back. Is like each one
27:33
Speaker 4: of those things is cool on its own, but every
27:36
Speaker 4: single time it lasted too long, and it just made
27:39
Speaker 4: me think, Man, I've seen this before, and I've seen
27:42
Speaker 4: it done better.
27:44
Speaker 2: Well do you feel do you feel that the music
27:48
Speaker 2: by Harry Gregson Williams help at all? Did that?
27:52
Speaker 4: It made me think about Man on Fire even more,
27:55
Speaker 4: where Aaron I was like, you know what I want, Denzel,
27:59
Speaker 4: I want a revenge store and get me Harry Griggson
28:02
Speaker 4: freaking Williams.
28:03
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, Darren. You know for the music. Did the
28:07
Speaker 2: music work for you? Did it contribute to the tension
28:11
Speaker 2: building the action scenes, anything like that, or was it
28:14
Speaker 2: just something you didn't really notice at all? Yeah?
28:17
Speaker 3: No, I'm seeing a lot of his list. There's a
28:20
Speaker 3: lot of coworking with very big action movies, especially in
28:24
Speaker 3: the nineties and two thousands. So yeah, it it drew
28:29
Speaker 3: It drew me in because just like any sort of
28:34
Speaker 3: action movie, knowing when to play the music and when
28:39
Speaker 3: to have it be like that sound like they're sneaking
28:42
Speaker 3: up the stairs or you hear the creaks of doors
28:44
Speaker 3: or things like that. You know, that is also a
28:47
Speaker 3: major component of music. It's not every beat has to
28:51
Speaker 3: have a thing happening, like you know, you don't need
28:53
Speaker 3: you don't need it everywhere. So I think the balance
28:57
Speaker 3: they struck in the equalizer was really good. I'm not
29:00
Speaker 3: going to talk about the end credits for the end
29:03
Speaker 3: music because that felt a little I don't know what
29:06
Speaker 3: was happening there. It was like you know what I expected, like,
29:11
Speaker 3: you know, smash Mouth to come out or something, you know,
29:14
Speaker 3: to play play it off. It was very music video
29:17
Speaker 3: in the very last ten seconds. I don't know why. Uh.
29:22
Speaker 2: You know that is interesting because I know that in
29:25
Speaker 2: the in the trailer they debuted a song by Eminem
29:30
Speaker 2: with Sia. I think what the trailer was the debut
29:34
Speaker 2: of a new song, and I forget the name of it.
29:37
Speaker 2: I think it was like something before Fear or something
29:41
Speaker 2: like that. Yeah, I think that Fuquah did make an
29:46
Speaker 2: odd choice at the end there. I absolutely concede that,
29:52
Speaker 2: But I think maybe you put your finger on it
29:54
Speaker 2: that he's his music video roots just got the better of.
29:57
Speaker 3: Him, gots over, fearts over.
30:00
Speaker 2: That's what it is. That's that's over here man.
30:03
Speaker 3: That name.
30:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. So you know what we haven't talked
30:08
Speaker 2: about at this point is the supporting cast. So of course, Chloe,
30:13
Speaker 2: Chloe Grace Moretz is there as as you know, the
30:17
Speaker 2: first recipient of Robert's support on his revenge killing spree.
30:25
Speaker 2: But Tristan, you know, do you feel that the supporting
30:28
Speaker 2: cast is seen in this film or do you feel
30:31
Speaker 2: that it's mainly just Denzel Washington and people floating in
30:35
Speaker 2: to deliver lines to spur him forward.
30:38
Speaker 4: No, no, no, I think this is a I think
30:40
Speaker 4: this is a solid supporting cast. Like I free and
30:43
Speaker 4: love Martin Koscas. I absolutely love him. I think I
30:47
Speaker 4: hope I'm pronouncing his name right. And also it was
30:50
Speaker 4: fun to see David Harbor in this. I think it's
30:53
Speaker 4: always a good time when David Harbor pops up. I'm
30:56
Speaker 4: not the biggest fan of Chloe Grace Morets. I don't
30:59
Speaker 4: know what it is. I think a little bit. I
31:02
Speaker 4: know that she's a good actress and she's been acting
31:04
Speaker 4: for such a long time, but it's a little of
31:08
Speaker 4: irrational dislike. I think maybe it's her voice. I don't
31:11
Speaker 4: dig on that vocal fry.
31:13
Speaker 2: That is she your Meryl Streep?
31:17
Speaker 4: She might be likely enough, like whenever I see her face,
31:22
Speaker 4: I'm like, why which.
31:25
Speaker 2: Is not which? So the audience understands is no comment
31:29
Speaker 2: on how she looks.
31:30
Speaker 4: No, I mean saying she's a very pretty woman.
31:33
Speaker 2: When he sees her in a role, it's like, I react.
31:37
Speaker 2: This is why I made the reference when I write
31:39
Speaker 2: when I react to Meryl Streep on a movie post.
31:42
Speaker 2: For some unknown reason my first reaction is eugh, okay,
31:46
Speaker 2: And even though I know fully well, fully well, she's
31:49
Speaker 2: a great actress and everybody loves her and everything, for
31:51
Speaker 2: some reason very deep in.
31:54
Speaker 4: My stupid it's it's the same exact thing. It's something
31:57
Speaker 4: really really weird. It's it's uncon She's very talented, she
32:02
Speaker 4: was freaking hilarious and thirty rock. She just got married,
32:06
Speaker 4: So congratulations to her.
32:08
Speaker 2: But what a wonderful journey she's just taken.
32:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, So like, honestly, honestly, it's all me. It's all me,
32:14
Speaker 4: and I don't know what it is. But one thing
32:18
Speaker 4: that I thought was a little weird, Bill Pullman was there.
32:22
Speaker 3: Was that was a surprise. It was a little distracting
32:25
Speaker 3: for like five lines, like it could have been anybody.
32:29
Speaker 4: It should have been anybody. I think that's the thing.
32:32
Speaker 2: No, there are no small roles, only small actors gentlemen,
32:38
Speaker 2: and mister Pullman showed up and he delivered those five
32:42
Speaker 2: lines with more skill than many other actors.
32:46
Speaker 4: Will Now, I freaking love Bill Pullman. He's an amazing actor.
32:50
Speaker 4: But that's why it was so weird, because he was
32:53
Speaker 4: the she wasn't She wasn't a politician. But she was like,
32:57
Speaker 4: I guess you could call her one like she was
32:59
Speaker 4: in she was the the agency or she worked.
33:01
Speaker 2: At the Agency's a former director Intelligence Community bureaucrat.
33:06
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so there you go, bureaucrat Like okay, so
33:09
Speaker 4: he was the bureaucrats husband, right, it's all he needed
33:13
Speaker 4: to be. You don't get Bill Pullman for that.
33:16
Speaker 3: Un named bureaucrats husband number two, Like that's what it's
33:20
Speaker 3: the level of it.
33:22
Speaker 2: Yes.
33:22
Speaker 4: Also, that's another scene that I would cut. I would
33:24
Speaker 4: completely excise that scene.
33:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, that scene it got away from me because it
33:31
Speaker 3: was like I got confused because there was too many
33:35
Speaker 3: There was too few and too many people at the
33:37
Speaker 3: same time in that scene because she gets there and
33:40
Speaker 3: and they're talking about his wife, and then this lady
33:43
Speaker 3: shows up, and I'm like, is that his wife? That
33:45
Speaker 3: she didn't know that he was dead? And this is
33:48
Speaker 3: how he finds out. Like I got very confused, Like
33:51
Speaker 3: obviously that was not the case, but a lot is happening.
33:55
Speaker 3: It was very kind of Jason Burney. I was like,
33:59
Speaker 3: you know, reaching back in the days of the Agency,
34:01
Speaker 3: you know, I don't have context anymore, and and I
34:04
Speaker 3: just it was it was messy. It didn't. I was
34:08
Speaker 3: really flow.
34:09
Speaker 4: I was really excited up until that moment because I
34:11
Speaker 4: was like, cool, this movie dares to not answer the
34:17
Speaker 4: question of what does his resume look like? And because
34:23
Speaker 4: there's always that that Steven Sagall moment where some general
34:29
Speaker 4: or some agency man or some bad guys like no,
34:32
Speaker 4: you don't understand. Okay, this guy was a Green Beret
34:36
Speaker 4: and a Navy seal at the same time. Like you
34:40
Speaker 4: drop him off in Mexico with nothing cut but a
34:44
Speaker 4: stick of gum. You know, he's gonna wind up on
34:46
Speaker 4: your doorstep with a couple of pesos in his hand,
34:49
Speaker 4: you know, like like like yeah, Like I was really
34:52
Speaker 4: proud of the movie for not doing that. But then
34:54
Speaker 4: we have this scene which really felt out of place
34:58
Speaker 4: because not only did he expel himself that he was
35:01
Speaker 4: really alive, but he telegraphed what he was going to do,
35:05
Speaker 4: how I was going to do it. And she's supposed
35:07
Speaker 4: to fly to DC and back via helicopter or something
35:10
Speaker 4: and get the information. And so what's gonna happen when
35:13
Speaker 4: all these people wind up dead and they're gonna go
35:15
Speaker 4: you know, you know, missus plumber, you grabbed a lot
35:19
Speaker 4: of files on this push can guard.
35:21
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, see, oh wait, you gotta listen as
35:25
Speaker 2: the Metro native, as a DC Metro native. That's exactly things,
35:31
Speaker 2: and nobody knows where any files are. Tristan, I hate
35:34
Speaker 2: to pull the ball off of everybody's eyes here, but
35:37
Speaker 2: trust me, it's exactly, very believable that somebody's gonna walk
35:41
Speaker 2: into the hallway somewhere, grab a big stack of files,
35:43
Speaker 2: walk out, and nobody's gonna know for thirty years than
35:46
Speaker 2: anything happened.
35:47
Speaker 4: I think that was in the news a couple of
35:49
Speaker 4: years ago, and so no I can understand that part.
35:52
Speaker 2: No problem.
35:53
Speaker 3: Okay, that makes it okay. It's even worse because that's
35:58
Speaker 3: how confused I was in this scene. I totally thought, okay,
36:04
Speaker 3: so he drives up and it's Bill Pullman and Bill
36:06
Speaker 3: Pullman's wife, Melissa Lao is is Susan Pullman or so
36:11
Speaker 3: Sue Susan Plummer and.
36:13
Speaker 2: Then he leaves.
36:16
Speaker 3: I totally thought she called somebody, and then another lady
36:19
Speaker 3: showed up. I thought it was two separate characters. It
36:22
Speaker 3: was that weirdly joined. And then I also thinking, is
36:27
Speaker 3: mainly one of them his ex wife? I don't know.
36:29
Speaker 2: I would offer possibly that watching the movie in pieces
36:34
Speaker 2: might have contributed.
36:35
Speaker 3: That was not the piece I missed, okay in the
36:39
Speaker 3: middle of the second act.
36:40
Speaker 4: So yeah, I felt like it was clumsy and tropy.
36:44
Speaker 4: It felt like it was a something you'd see in
36:46
Speaker 4: a nineties film, not something from it.
36:49
Speaker 3: It's all there so she can deliver the line he's
36:52
Speaker 3: asking for permission right like like it's like, oh, we
36:56
Speaker 3: got to have this line. Oh how do we get there? Well,
36:58
Speaker 3: eight pages of later, I think we cracked it. It's like, okay,
37:03
Speaker 3: but let's stop start again. There's got to be a
37:06
Speaker 3: simpler way to get to that line.
37:08
Speaker 2: That's what it feels like. Again, don't have a problem
37:11
Speaker 2: with it. I actually you know it's what.
37:15
Speaker 3: You're sting is you hear what we're saying, but we
37:17
Speaker 3: don't agree with us.
37:19
Speaker 2: What I hear right now is a surprising level of disrespect.
37:24
Speaker 2: So we'll go ahead, go ahead into the next question
37:27
Speaker 2: of everything for the for the for the podcast. No,
37:32
Speaker 2: I I just didn't find it as clunky. I don't.
37:35
Speaker 2: I don't know if there is something about the pacing
37:39
Speaker 2: or anything else that just for some reason felt right
37:42
Speaker 2: to me, Like that obviously didn't click for the both
37:46
Speaker 2: of you. Because when I sat down, you know, to
37:49
Speaker 2: rewatch this, it's far from my first time watching it.
37:53
Speaker 2: I always find myself just sort of like getting in
37:55
Speaker 2: and there's this sort of vibe to the film, and
37:59
Speaker 2: it sort of puts me in this Really, I feel
38:03
Speaker 2: like it has a really good flow, which is why
38:07
Speaker 2: I'm saying, like I can understand where somebody could look
38:09
Speaker 2: at it and say one hundred and thirty two minutes,
38:10
Speaker 2: you could cut this down to like one hundred and
38:12
Speaker 2: twenty or one hundred and twenty five. I'm like, okay,
38:14
Speaker 2: I'm hearing that argument. Okay, But it's just like how
38:19
Speaker 2: sometimes you can listen to the right album and maybe
38:22
Speaker 2: other people don't love the album, but all of a sudden,
38:24
Speaker 2: that album's over and you're like, oh wow, okay, I
38:27
Speaker 2: just got sucked in. This is one of those types
38:30
Speaker 2: of movies for me where because it takes its time
38:34
Speaker 2: and it doesn't I don't think that it ever trips
38:38
Speaker 2: a moment where it stayed so long on something that
38:43
Speaker 2: I started to feel it too much. A lot of
38:46
Speaker 2: times it will approach that and then it's moved on
38:49
Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh okay. I think also some of
38:52
Speaker 2: the segmentation of it feels like a subtle homage to
38:57
Speaker 2: the series, Like it feels like a series like television,
39:01
Speaker 2: like television episodes put together, like this is a series
39:03
Speaker 2: of things that build and I have like a whole
39:06
Speaker 2: season in you know, two plus hours sort of this
39:09
Speaker 2: sweeps week.
39:10
Speaker 3: We have basically episodes that all connect together.
39:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, and equalizer event starting Sunday, that sort of thing.
39:19
Speaker 4: Speaking of which, Okay, automatic star, full star taken off
39:24
Speaker 4: of the rating because Denzel not once said you've been equalized. Okay,
39:30
Speaker 4: I just.
39:31
Speaker 3: Or or at the very end when he's like, who
39:33
Speaker 3: are you, like, he didn't he didn't say I'm the equalizer,
39:37
Speaker 3: which there's no reason he would say that at all.
39:42
Speaker 3: But I didn't say it, but it was it was implied.
39:47
Speaker 2: So all right, that's fair enough. That's fair enough. A
39:49
Speaker 2: star subtracted for subverting expectations. It's happened before.
39:54
Speaker 3: He pulls out a pair of balancing scales. Yes, and
39:58
Speaker 3: it's like I'm the egal now.
40:01
Speaker 2: As we're wrapping up, though, I do want to say,
40:04
Speaker 2: you know, like this is a director focused podcast, and
40:07
Speaker 2: Fuquah definitely he's comfortable here. I feel that he and
40:12
Speaker 2: he and the cinematographer are working well together. We'll have
40:16
Speaker 2: disagreements about whether he and the editor are working well together.
40:19
Speaker 2: He and Williams are working well together in terms of
40:22
Speaker 2: the score. So this is somebody's who's got a flow,
40:25
Speaker 2: who's got things being put together. There were other directors.
40:29
Speaker 2: This was in development hell for a little bit, and
40:31
Speaker 2: there were other directors that were mentioned as we went along,
40:35
Speaker 2: and I just want to throw them out there and
40:37
Speaker 2: just ask would you have wanted to see an Equalizer
40:39
Speaker 2: directed by this director? One of the names out there
40:43
Speaker 2: that was first slated to direct was I'm going to
40:47
Speaker 2: butcher his last name, And we do have a Scottish
40:49
Speaker 2: member of or two of the the nerd party. So whatever, guys,
40:54
Speaker 2: Paul McGuigan, McGuigan, McGuigan, I don't know mcg u I
40:59
Speaker 2: ga whatever. Scottish director known for Lucky Number Sleven, Gangster
41:05
Speaker 2: Number One and Push Darren. You're not at all familiar
41:08
Speaker 2: with those movies, so you have no idea whether that
41:09
Speaker 2: would have worked, do you?
41:12
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
41:13
Speaker 2: That's okay, neither do I Tristan same from you or
41:16
Speaker 2: have you seen some of his work?
41:18
Speaker 4: Mcgwigan mcgwigan's all I can say.
41:20
Speaker 2: Okay, that's all we can say. So that's probably why
41:23
Speaker 2: they didn't move forward with this director who people don't
41:26
Speaker 2: really know. But then a name comes up when Russell
41:29
Speaker 2: Crowe was trying to bring The Equalizer to screen where
41:32
Speaker 2: he was going to play Robert McCall, and it's a
41:36
Speaker 2: Paul Haggis, known for Million Dollar Baby and Crash. Can
41:42
Speaker 2: you see Paul Haggis directing The Equalizer and delivering two
41:47
Speaker 2: plus hours of righteous justice to the world, Darren? More so?
41:57
Speaker 2: More so, we're trending in the right direct, Tristan. Can
42:01
Speaker 2: you see a Paul Hagis?
42:03
Speaker 4: No, But I think Russell Crowe would have crushed it.
42:07
Speaker 2: Russell crow would have been great, and he would. I
42:09
Speaker 2: think that if Russell Crowe had made this film, it
42:12
Speaker 2: would have been much more of a callback to the
42:17
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties show. It would have felt much more like, Oh,
42:20
Speaker 2: we're just doing like a big screen version of the
42:23
Speaker 2: TV show that you loved watching oh so many years ago.
42:27
Speaker 2: Like that's what it would feel to me. He'd have
42:29
Speaker 2: the right type of accent for the lead character, he'd
42:32
Speaker 2: be the right type of age for the character. Those
42:35
Speaker 2: sorts of things.
42:36
Speaker 4: Well, one thing with having Denzel in this movie, because
42:40
Speaker 4: Denzel is a perfectionist and he is heavily involved, like
42:44
Speaker 4: when he's the leading man, he's heavily involved in the
42:47
Speaker 4: process in pre production, in writing and tweaking and everything
42:52
Speaker 4: like that. And so it was his idea to make
42:55
Speaker 4: McCall have OCD, and it was a legitimate portrayal of OCD.
43:01
Speaker 4: Like there was none of this. It was none of
43:04
Speaker 4: this whole key bs that we see all over TV
43:07
Speaker 4: and movies and everything like that. Like it was it
43:09
Speaker 4: was like, no, this is what OCD can look like
43:12
Speaker 4: in certain cases. And that's one of the most defining
43:15
Speaker 4: characteristics of this character in this movie. And I think
43:19
Speaker 4: Denzel did such a great job of bringing his denzelness
43:23
Speaker 4: to the to the movie but doing something a little
43:26
Speaker 4: different on top of that. And also I just want
43:28
Speaker 4: to mention in terms of like Fuqua's direction to keep
43:33
Speaker 4: all the costuming normal was a really refreshing take and really,
43:40
Speaker 4: like I keep using that word in terms of fuquaus
43:42
Speaker 4: direction in this movie, like it's he does a lot
43:45
Speaker 4: of refreshing things, and that was one of them, was
43:48
Speaker 4: keeping Denzel in a regular shirt tucked in, belted in
43:53
Speaker 4: jeans and boots. You know, like that's what he looks like.
43:57
Speaker 4: He's the normal guy. He's living a normal life, total
44:00
Speaker 4: normal backstory. You know, like like you said, college educated,
44:05
Speaker 4: you know, works forty hours a week at not Home depot.
44:08
Speaker 4: You know, like it was just it was really cool
44:10
Speaker 4: to see.
44:10
Speaker 2: Now. One director who was thrown out there very close
44:15
Speaker 2: to production time in twenty twelve entered the talks was
44:20
Speaker 2: and I always butcher this guy's name, but known for
44:23
Speaker 2: Drive and The Neon Demon, among others, Nicholas Winding refin Rifn,
44:29
Speaker 2: I always mess up his last name A love Drive.
44:32
Speaker 2: Just for the record, Drive is a freaking fantastic film,
44:36
Speaker 2: and Neon Demon is a work of art that I
44:39
Speaker 2: thought highly of but will never watch again for the
44:41
Speaker 2: rest of my life for various reasons. That's a very
44:46
Speaker 2: different movie in and of itself. Darren, Have you seen
44:49
Speaker 2: Drive with Ryan Gosling? Yes, you can see that director
44:55
Speaker 2: giving us another equalizer similar to this.
44:58
Speaker 3: I mean, it's kind of the antithesis of Drive, because
45:01
Speaker 3: I don't think Denzil has a car in this movie.
45:04
Speaker 3: He takes like public transportation, yes, everywhere, So it's.
45:09
Speaker 2: But but in terms of the vibe of the main character.
45:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, they get in an elevator and it's all going
45:14
Speaker 3: to go bad and yeah, you no, it's it's definitely
45:18
Speaker 3: the same.
45:18
Speaker 2: Vibe, just the same question to you, can you see
45:23
Speaker 2: I can't?
45:24
Speaker 4: No, I think it's I mean, you know, one of
45:27
Speaker 4: my criticisms of Fukua was overstylizing.
45:31
Speaker 2: Some addas, and uh, okay, I see where you're going
45:37
Speaker 2: with this.
45:37
Speaker 4: That's all you really need to say with refin in
45:39
Speaker 4: the in the conversation, that's all you would get.
45:42
Speaker 2: That is very very true. Yes, and I love al.
45:46
Speaker 2: On the Wikipedia page it says the deal with Sony
45:49
Speaker 2: fell through for unknown reasons, and I'm just willing to
45:53
Speaker 2: bet there was some request for the film or like
45:57
Speaker 2: he said, this is how I would approach it, and
45:59
Speaker 2: the exacts relfe huh no. And then they went in
46:03
Speaker 2: to god fuquah.
46:04
Speaker 4: Alright, So so Dinzel, all right, he blows off this
46:07
Speaker 4: dude's head with a shotgun. We see it in slow motion,
46:11
Speaker 4: all right, But the thing is the head grows back
46:13
Speaker 4: because he's a vampire. Boom end of movie, yes.
46:16
Speaker 2: Or something like. And then he takes all of the
46:18
Speaker 2: pieces and he puts them together like a puzzle. Afterwards,
46:22
Speaker 2: something twist.
46:23
Speaker 3: He was blade all along.
46:25
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, all right, Darren just took it into could
46:30
Speaker 4: be a good movie territory.
46:32
Speaker 2: That's true.
46:33
Speaker 3: Believe that happens the last ten seconds with Catches, they
46:39
Speaker 3: get tossed.
46:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, Catches.
46:41
Speaker 4: It puts him on these monsters keep trying to ice
46:44
Speaker 4: skate up hill.
46:46
Speaker 2: So here we are. We've gone through the film, We've
46:50
Speaker 2: discussed this work from Antoine Fuquah, and so we come
46:56
Speaker 2: to the point of rating this film. And so I
47:01
Speaker 2: am going to throw it to Tristan first because I
47:04
Speaker 2: feel like if we start with Tristan, Darren, we got
47:07
Speaker 2: nowhere to go but up. And so let's see if
47:10
Speaker 2: I'm right, Tristan, where are you landing on the five
47:14
Speaker 2: star scale of stars? We always try to do something.
47:18
Speaker 2: How many nail guns are you going to give the equalizer?
47:23
Speaker 4: Okay, So I'm not going to repeat myself because you
47:25
Speaker 4: guys have heard my points, my thought process. You hear me,
47:30
Speaker 4: but you don't agree with me. Yes, Now, what I
47:33
Speaker 4: will do is I will talk about the end. So
47:37
Speaker 4: this guy is supposed to be in hiding and no
47:40
Speaker 4: one's supposed to know who he is or what he
47:42
Speaker 4: can do. And then half of the home depot staff
47:47
Speaker 4: sees him kick mobster ass and he kills a lot
47:53
Speaker 4: of people, a lot of people, and he single handedly
47:58
Speaker 4: takes out Russian mob on the East coast and travels
48:04
Speaker 4: to Moscow to finish the job.
48:07
Speaker 2: Sure does.
48:08
Speaker 4: And then he comes home, buys groceries, yes, and goes
48:13
Speaker 4: to his to his favorite diner like nothing happened. Yes, okay, sir, Yes,
48:19
Speaker 4: questions will be asked your your coworkers will go, dude,
48:26
Speaker 4: what the hell was that. More importantly, the police will
48:31
Speaker 4: have questions for him. You can't just go back to
48:35
Speaker 4: your life and pretend all of that didn't happen. He
48:39
Speaker 4: broke a lot of loss, and people know who he
48:43
Speaker 4: is and where it is now equal now like okay,
48:48
Speaker 4: So like I was already having a frustrating watch and
48:51
Speaker 4: then that happened, and I'm like what because okay, we're
48:56
Speaker 4: not in this is I'm going to reference John Wick,
48:58
Speaker 4: Agan and John Wick. It's it's this weird alternate reverse
49:02
Speaker 4: where there's this secret society where assassins pay for body
49:06
Speaker 4: pickup in coins. Okay, that's otherworldly nonsense. It's supposed to
49:13
Speaker 4: be fictional and fun and different, unique and weird. We
49:16
Speaker 4: get it. It's a hyper reality. This movie is not
49:19
Speaker 4: presented as hyperreality. You can't just murder the mob and
49:25
Speaker 4: travel to Moscow, kill the head of the snake, chop
49:28
Speaker 4: off the head of the snake, and come back and
49:30
Speaker 4: buy groceries. This isn't This is not Grand Theft Auto,
49:35
Speaker 4: where if the police don't capture you after five minutes,
49:37
Speaker 4: they give up searching for you. This is two and
49:41
Speaker 4: a half stars generously.
49:43
Speaker 2: I hear you. I'm going to disagree because I think
49:47
Speaker 2: that by its very nature of existence, it's hyperreality. I
49:52
Speaker 2: mean you can take a look at the way they
49:56
Speaker 2: very carefully craft the action scenes, they have, the stories,
50:01
Speaker 2: everything like that. There is absolutely nothing realistic about this.
50:06
Speaker 2: It is every bit as hyper reality as John Wick.
50:09
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, even yes, no, I'm absolutely right about
50:13
Speaker 2: this close. That is a minute about No, it is
50:16
Speaker 2: not a cop out because the minute you see him
50:19
Speaker 2: take them apart in twenty eight seconds and the way
50:22
Speaker 2: he does it, I'm like, Okay, I get it. This
50:24
Speaker 2: is the type of movie that we're in. This is
50:27
Speaker 2: same type of universe building as John Wick. This is
50:30
Speaker 2: same type of parallel reality strictly on the mounds that opening,
50:35
Speaker 2: that opening fight doesn't even come close to mirroring how
50:38
Speaker 2: reality functions.
50:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you know, it was weird that they added
50:42
Speaker 4: in the scene where he threw down some gold pirate
50:46
Speaker 4: coins in order to pay his tab at the Russian bar,
50:50
Speaker 4: and then like he drives away in a Jaguar. Now
50:53
Speaker 4: you know, like, yeah, that souped up Jaguar with all
50:55
Speaker 4: that hyper music and yeah, and then all of a
50:58
Speaker 4: sudden on a Dharmas comes out and just starts perioetting,
51:00
Speaker 4: and then like there's a there's a person with like
51:03
Speaker 4: knives on her feet. Yeah, this is totally on the
51:05
Speaker 4: same level as that.
51:06
Speaker 2: Well, I haven't seen Ballerina and I tapped out after
51:09
Speaker 2: john Wick three, so maybe there's something I'm missing. Anyway,
51:13
Speaker 2: I think this is a solid entertainment from beginning to finish.
51:16
Speaker 2: I'm not looking for anything beyond what it is, which
51:20
Speaker 2: is not my way of like doing one of those
51:22
Speaker 2: like Caddy Internet comments toward you, Tristan. It all like
51:26
Speaker 2: it declared itself to me, and I declared my love
51:30
Speaker 2: for it after that first fight. So this is a
51:33
Speaker 2: solid four for me. This is really great entertainment from
51:36
Speaker 2: beginning to finish. I really enjoy this. Yes, I agree
51:40
Speaker 2: it could be trimmed down. Yes, I agree. There are
51:42
Speaker 2: certain scenes where it's like, Okay, this scene could be
51:45
Speaker 2: about three quarters this length. But you know what, I'm
51:48
Speaker 2: willing to go with it because, like I said, it
51:50
Speaker 2: slides into a groove and I'm grooving with it. Darren
51:54
Speaker 2: Tristan gives it two and a half. I give it
51:57
Speaker 2: for I don't think I'm getting more than a four Outnue.
52:01
Speaker 2: But are we backsliding back towards Tristan or are we holding?
52:05
Speaker 2: Are we equalizing?
52:06
Speaker 4: Oh jeez, they're raising No.
52:10
Speaker 3: This was This was a really fun movie. I really
52:12
Speaker 3: enjoyed watching it. It did really well at the box office.
52:15
Speaker 3: It made almost two hundred million on like a fifty
52:18
Speaker 3: five seventy million budgets, So that means there's gonna be sequels, gentlemen.
52:23
Speaker 3: Oh yes, and yeah, the you know from the opening part,
52:28
Speaker 3: the opening fight, when he is kind of looking around
52:32
Speaker 3: at everything. I don't know about you guys, but I
52:34
Speaker 3: was getting flashbacks to Robert Downey Junior's Sherlock Holmes without
52:39
Speaker 3: the narration where he's like, you know, planning out his moves.
52:43
Speaker 3: He was more like sizing up the room. Like. It
52:46
Speaker 3: wasn't as so far as like and then I'm gonna
52:48
Speaker 3: stab him. It's more like he has a knife, file
52:51
Speaker 3: that away for ten seconds from now. So I really
52:54
Speaker 3: like that, Like it worked really well. I love the
52:58
Speaker 3: way I viewed it at the very end when he's
53:00
Speaker 3: you know, in the sprinkler rain and it's looking you know,
53:04
Speaker 3: zubin it on his eye. They really like zubinan on
53:06
Speaker 3: his eye.
53:07
Speaker 2: But but I loved.
53:09
Speaker 3: The end shot where he it's like he's crying but
53:13
Speaker 3: not crying because the tears are from the rain, not
53:17
Speaker 3: from They're from the outside, not from the inside. I
53:20
Speaker 3: was like, oh, I don't think. I don't know if
53:22
Speaker 3: that was intentional, but it feels very poetic. But no,
53:25
Speaker 3: I'm given this four stars. I really enjoyed this movie.
53:29
Speaker 3: Yes it's kicking off. I think it's going to be
53:32
Speaker 3: a great franchise. And I'm I still can't believe he
53:38
Speaker 3: did all this without a car. So that's that's there's
53:41
Speaker 3: no chase sequence.
53:42
Speaker 2: That's oh, just you wait until you see the next one,
53:47
Speaker 2: and they yeah, you'll you'll understand. So all that said,
53:51
Speaker 2: we've had a lot of fun here in the House
53:53
Speaker 2: of Fuquah looking at these films, and you know, the Equalizer,
53:57
Speaker 2: It seems to have split us, but I find myself
54:01
Speaker 2: satisfied with these films. And Darren, you know, why don't
54:06
Speaker 2: you take us out? What's coming up next?
54:08
Speaker 3: Well, we had a great time visiting three decades of
54:11
Speaker 3: Antoine and next we're going to be covering the mechas
54:15
Speaker 3: of the nineties with Back to the Future Part three.
54:19
Speaker 3: Here on, house Lights
54:21
Speaker 1: Join the Revolution, join the ned Party,