Finally! After nearly six weeks, I've got another article to share with you all! At least I'm sticking to my "one article a month" plan, if only technically so. (Also, I did hear that Dune got delayed, much to my dismay.) Still, I was able to catch a handful of films, and while they may not be the mostly timely of movies, they're still pretty decent, each in their own way.
So while The Flash created the opportunity to reboot the DC lineup of films, and James Gunn's new continuity hasn't started up yet, we have a pair of films that are essentially in limbo, and this is one of them. Leaning heavily into the Latin American angle of the character, this movie provides a decent, if messy, take on a typical superhero origin story.
Just a young man trying to get by, Jaime Reyes comes back from college to discover that his family has had to deal with more than a few setbacks. Eager to try and make a difference, he gets employed by Kord Industries, and before long, gets caught up in some Kord family drama involving a blue scarab pendant and its ability to power military mech suits. When the scarab itself becomes permanently attached to him, Jaime must rely on his supportive family and friends to understand what's going on and become part of an ongoing superhero legacy.
At first, it feels a tad predictable, as a young man gets in over his head, has to learn how to use his new powers, and eventually saves the day, but it makes up for it by focusing on the heart of things, especially his relationship with his quirky family. It takes a bit to get going, but once it does, the pacing becomes rather inconsistent, with the action scenes, while fun, often move a little too quickly, while the slower dramatic scenes feel clunky and stiff. There's also a lot of what I assume are little inside jokes for the Mexican community that went over my head, so your mileage may vary with those.
Still, it was a fun little film that might not be the most organized or well thought out, but certainly tries to get by on earnestness (which worked for the first Aquaman as well). Some of the jokes are pretty good, there are a few video game references that I did pick up on (why are there Blue Beetle powers in a Nintendo Power Glove?), and overall, the movie keeps it focus on where it should. It's hard to know if anything here will carry over to the new DC program, especially since it only did okay at the box office, but on it's own, it wasn't a waste a time.
I kinda had to do a double-take when I saw that it had been five years since the last Equalizer film. However, with Denzel and Antoine back on board, I was eager to see where they would take things for the third set of scales to balance. The result is a pretty satisfying film that isn't afraid to take its time, much like the first one was.
Once again, Robert McCall is in over his head again, this time out in the rural parts of Italy, where he finds some pretty serious drug operations at a wine farm. This time, things don't go quite as smoothly, and he ends up having to recuperate in the small town of Altamonte, leaving him with doubts about who he is and whether or not he can continue doing this kind of freelance work. However, after leaving a tip with the CIA and then dealing with some local gangsters keen on turning this nice town upside down, Robert finally decides it's time for one last bought of vigilante justice.
And that's really it. Much like the first film, the premise is pretty straight-forward. No real twists or surprises, just an exercise in seeing bad guys do bad guy things and then watching them get their comeuppance through McCall's methodical and lethal skills. Once again, Denzel Washington nails the subtleties of the character, even pushing him toward a darker direction at times. Dakota Fanning does a decent job as the CIA operative who picks up on what McCall found, the locals are perfectly quaint, and the villains are intimidating enough to feel worthy of the destruction heading their way.
I still have a few gripes though. They have Denzel march up dozens of narrow staircases that are a part of Altamonte's layout, and while it's immediately clear that this is part of McCall's rehabilitation, I was expecting the final showdown to make use of the maze-like structure of the town, and it didn't happen at all. I also found the ending to be weirdly drawn out. While I won't spoil it, there's a section at the end where I definitely felt was being stretched out, as the movie takes considerable time to follow a certain slow sequence to its final moment (you'll know what I mean when you see it).
Fans of the first two films will find plenty to like, with all the gory and intense violence and the grim determination of the title character all returning. There's definitely a finality to it all (though one wonders if this might not be a backdoor pilot for Dakota Fanning to carry it on somehow; nothing's been said so far about that, for the moment), as Denzel is looking a little more weary, but perhaps that's just him reflecting the worn-down nature of the character. In any case, it was a pretty solid film that pulled together its themes and elements quite well, even if it is just a pretty straight-forward action-thriller.
After enjoying a handful of John le Carré's novels, as well as some of their adaptations, I decided to dig further back and pick up this classic British black-and-white film that adapts the novel quite faithfully. The result is a film that matches the terse and tense nature of the book as the facts slowly stack to eventually reveal what's really going on.
Alex Leamas, a British spy who's efforts have been constantly thwarted by the East German spy Mundt, takes on a mission to pretend to have gone to pot and therefore becomes easy pickings for the communists to pick him as a defector in order to get close to Mundt's second hand man Fiedler and give him false clues to get him to think that Mundt is a traitor. However, as things develop beyond even Leamas's expectations, it slowly becomes clear who is really playing whom.
The film is as stark as the book, leaning into a very barren, empty feeling as these spies work each other over, and the black-and-white filming helps to reinforce this. The soundtrack also does its part, shifting between long stretches of silence and the occasional ominous ambience that's just as jarring as the quiet is. The acting is very muted, deliberately so, which helps as there is a lot of information to go over. If there is a problem, I do think some things could have been explained a little better, at least in the beginning where Leamas pretends to fall apart. I often wondered if perhaps the movie expecting people to be familiar with the book already, and given how popular it was at the time in England, it might have been reasonable to think so.
One thing I did think about was, given how recent the book came out, and how close it was to the current events at the time, if it wasn't perceived as a very immediate and harrowing look at the Cold War and how muddled it had become by that time. I'm sure it felt very relevant, like seeing a drama play out in front of the latest news stories. It also likely served as a rather deep contrast to the James Bond films which were just starting to pick up at the time. Instead of ridiculous villains and gimmicky gadgets, this is a no frills affair about information and deception, only for the floor to drop out at the end.
As I knew the story from the book, it was interesting to see things play out, knowing what was going on and why. However, I did wonder if maybe the climax could have been stronger, as it maintains its muted and deliberate tone all the way through. Still, it's an impressive feat to book-to-movie adaptation, as there are a number of ways they could have messed with it, and yet they chose not to, right up to the end. Anyone interested in checking out a Cold War thriller that requires a little thinking to follow its ideas would be a fool to not seek out this film, as its about as John le Carré as it gets, even more so than the others I've seen.
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