EQUALIZER 3 : Tuesday 5th September 2023.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'THE EQUALIZER 3' at my local independent movie theatre this week, and this American action thriller film is Directed and Co-Produced by Antoine Fuqua and is the sequel to 2018's 'Equalizer 2' and the third and final instalment in the 'Equalizer' trilogy. Those first two films, also Directed by Antoine Fuqua grossed US$383M off the back of combined production budgets of US135M, and is loosely based on the TV series which ran for a total of eighty-eight episodes over four seasons from 1985 through until 1989 and starred Edward Woodward as the titular Equalizer, Robert McCall. This film has so far grossed US$75M from a production budget of US$70M since its release last week, and has generated mixed or average reviews. Earlier last month, Antoine Fuqua is reported to have commented that there have been discussions to develop a prequel movie detailing the origins of Robert McCall, and later that while internally talks were had about this being the final film chronologically, he would be interested in returning as Director for a future instalment if Denzel Washington was interested in returning to the role. 

The film opens with a drone shot of a Land Rover driving along country lanes in Sicily surrounded by row upon row of grape vines, until the car pulls up outside a secluded winery. Out steps Lorenzo Vitale (Bruno Bilotta), leaving his young son in the passenger seat, having first retrieved his revolver from the glove box. Vitale is greeted by another man, carrying a semi-automatic weapon who tells him that he was ordered to wait outside. Vitale gingerly makes his way in the through door and down into the depths of the winery stepping over numerous dead bodies along the way, who have all seemingly died very violent deaths. Sitting in the basement is Robert McCall (Denzel Washington, who also Co-Produces here) held captive by two of Vitale's henchmen. McCall gives Vitale nine seconds to consider his options before all hell breaks loose and McCall kills the three surviving henchmen and finishes off a badly injured Vitale with a bullet to the head. McCall then removes a bunch of keys from Vitale's belt to gain access to the winery's vault and recoup money stolen in a cyber-heist (the reason he is there which is revealed later). 

On leaving the winery however, McCall is shot in the back by Vitale's young son. Slumping down on a step after the boy has fled, he considers suicide due to his injury, but instead takes the ferry back to the mainland. Later that night, McCall's car is seen pulled over somewhere on the Amalfi Coast with the lights on, and the drivers door wide open with McCall unconscious from shock. He is found and rescued by Gio Bonucci (Eugenio Mastrandrea), a local Carabiniere, who takes him to Altamonte, a remote coastal Italian town, where he is treated by the local doctor Enzo Arisio (Remo Girone) who removes the .22 calibre bullet, and stitches McCall back up. 

McCall makes a steady albeit slow recovery, having to use a walking cane and initially struggling to use the stairs, but, he is determined to get his previous strength back. He becomes acquainted with the townsfolk, including a waitress named Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro), and becomes fond of the town and its people. He makes an anonymous phone call to CIA Agent Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning) to tip her off about the winery's role in the illegal drug trade under the guise of day to day business transactions in Sicily. Collins and other CIA operatives including her superior officer Frank Conroy (David Denham) later arrive at the winery and find millions in cash along with bags of Captagon tablets hidden inside hundreds of fake wine bottles within a storeroom, confirming McCall's suspicions. She later tracks down McCall at his local cafe, who is evasive about his identity. She tells him that he is a 'person of interest' in her investigations, to which he replies that he's just an 'interesting person'. 

In the meantime, members of the local Camorra clan harass and kill villagers in an attempt to coerce them out of their housing and take over Altamonte for the purpose of building hotels, resorts and casinos in the coastal town. McCall overhears Marco Quaranta (Andrea Dodero), a high-ranking Camorra member, beat up a local seafood storeowner named Angelo (Daniele Perrone) for payments when he is unable to make his weekly dues. To make an example, the Camorra firebomb Angelo's fish store as the townsfolk attempt to douse the flames and watch on. Bonucci reviews video of the firebombing and places a call in to Italian central Police with an inquiry on the van involved. He is later attacked by the Camorra in his own home while his wife and two young daughters are forced to watch on held at gunpoint. Later, while McCall is having dinner at a local restaurant, Marco and two of his henchmen burst in and demand that Bonucci, who is also dining with his family, set up a boat for them. Overhearing them, McCall requests Marco to move their operations to a someplace else, however, when Marco refuses, McCall kills him and his goons outside in a quiet street.

The Naples' head of Police is threatened and tortured by Marco's brother and head of the local clan Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio) to find who killed him. Vincent has Collins' car rigged with a bomb, but she narrowly escapes with non-life threatening injuries after McCall warns her. Vincent later threatens to shoot Bonucci in front of the entire town if McCall doesn’t reveal himself. McCall does, but before Vincent can kill him, the gathered townsfolk begin to record the unwinding scenario on their mobile phones, causing Vincent and the rest of the Camorra clan to flee, as Police sirens are heard approaching. Later that night, McCall stealthily infiltrates Vincent's heavily guarded home and one by one executes his henchmen leaving Vincent to last but not before he has seen the extent of the carnage that McCall has bestowed upon his home. He binds Vincent to a pillar with wire around his neck and his hands and forcible feeds him a handful of the Captagon tablets. When Vincent comes around already foaming at the mouth McCall undoes his bindings and tells him he has six minutes to live before the overdose kills him. Vincent stumbles to his legs and drags himself out of his home and into the streets before finally falling on his back and succumbing to the very drugs he peddles. 

McCall later visits Collins in hospital with a back pack containing US$366,400 in cash that he had previously retrieved from the winery, saying that it is for an elderly couple living in Boston who had their life's pension fund hacked at the touch of a button, leaving them with nothing. Later Collins, visits that couple and delivers the back pack containing the cash. Back in Langley, Virginia, Collins receives a promotion for her role in ending the Altamonte drug trade. With the Quaranta brothers dead, McCall celebrates with the locals after their team wins a football game. 

With 'The Equalizer 3' Director and Co-Producer Antoine Fuqua has delivered another offering in this franchise that follows a similar well trodden formula to its two predecessors, but this time switches the setting from Boston, Massachusetts to the Amalfi Coast in southern Italy. Apart from that one glaring factor, very little has changed from the previous two offerings, except that Washington has grown older, wiser and still has the ability to dispense with them bad dudes with violent aplomb in all manner of brutal ways, and, turn on the charm and the emotion when its warranted. The mid-section of the film labours a little while McCall hobbles about with the aid of a walking cane and gradually recuperates while under the watchful eye of Fanning's Collins, but is book ended by two scenes of graphic violence that show off McCall's very particular set of skills that he uses to unflinching effect to dispense with them pesky baddies. And in the closing scene all is good in the world, as Collins gets the promotion, and McCall is embraced by the locals in his new Italian home on the south coast. A fitting end to a fairly predictable run of the mill third instalment that is rescued by Washington's gravitas.

'The Equalizer 3' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

BRIGHTBURN : Tuesday 28th May 2019.

I saw 'BRIGHTBURN' this week, and here we have something new and seemingly fresh - a superhero horror film as Directed by David Yarovesky, Written by Mark and Brian Gunn (cousin and brother of James Gunn respectively) and Co-Produced by James Gunn. Costing US$7M to bring to the big screen, has so far taken US$19M since its release in the US last week too, and has so far garnered generally mixed or average Reviews.




The film opens up in 2006 and we are introduced to Tori and Kyle Breyer (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman respectively) who after a difficult struggle with fertility, have their dreams of parenthood come unexpectedly true with the arrival of a mysterious baby boy who crash lands on Earth somewhere in the vicinity of Brightburn, small-town Kansas, from another world it appears. Upon finding the infant, in the woods behind their farm, the couple decide to keep their discovery a secret and adopt the child as their own, calling him Brandon.

Fast forward twelve years and now approaching his teenage years Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) hears strange voices inside his head late one night. Over the next few days Brandon comes to the realisation that he has some very special powers, including a high degree of invulnerability to any pain or injury. This is evidenced when Kyle asks Brandon to mow the grass out in the paddock. Frustrated with getting the motor started on the mower, Brandon yanks so hard on the starter cable that he sends the mower flying skyward about one hundred meters into the distance. It lands in an upturned state with the rotor blades exposed and still running. Brandon saunters up to the mower, and promptly sticks his hand into the rapidly rotating blade, which brings the mower to an abrupt halt with the blade buckled beyond repair, and nary a scratch to young Brandon's hand.

Later that night, Brandon sleepwalks to the barn, and is seen trying frantically to open a chained and bolted trapdoor in the floor which contains the wreckage of the alien spacecraft that brought him to Earth. Tori was awakened by a red glowing light emanating from the barn and went to investigate. She sees Brandon crouched down at the trapdoor and wakes him, at which he is startled and doesn't know what he is doing there.

Over the ensuing days Brandon become more distant from his parents, more disobedient and more disrespectful of them. One morning over breakfast, Brandon is distracted by other thoughts and begins chewing on his fork, mangling it. Kyle witnesses this, and begins to suspect that something is not quite right with his son. That night Brandon visits the bedroom of fellow classmate Caitlyn (Emmie Hunter) and stares at her from behind the curtains until she notices him. She screams out, and when her mother enters the room he is gone. The next evening, when Kyle is securing the barn for the night, he hears a commotion from the adjacent chicken coup. Going to investigate he comes across Brandon glaring menacingly at said chooks. Later that night Kyle is woken by the sound of the chickens giving it all they've got. By the time he reaches the coup, all the chickens have been slaughtered. Tori claims it was the work of a wolf, but Kyle is more convinced it was the work of Brandon.

The next day at school, during a trust fall exercise Brandon is placed in the centre of the ring with his fellow classmates all tasked with catching him as he falls backwards. When Brandon is passed in the direction of Caitlyn she allows him to fall by stepping aside as she did not want to touch him after their previous episode. Brandon bangs his head on the ground but is unhurt. Caitlyn is tasked by the teacher to help Brandon get up. Reluctantly she stretches out a hand, which Brandon grabs and promptly crushes so breaking her hand. In a meeting of the parents in the Principal's Office, Brandon who has risen to the ranks of star pupil at the school, is suspended for two days by the Principal, and orders him to meet with his aunt Merilee McNichol (Meredith Hagner), the school Counsellor, afterwards.

A few nights later Tori finds her son levitating above the open glowing bright red trapdoor containing the hidden spaceship, repeating the words 'take the world' in an alien language that he hears inside his head again. Her interruption results in him falling and cutting his hand against a jagged piece of the spaceship - the first time in his life he has ever been injured or bled. Tori returns Brandon to the farmhouse and tends to his injury and then reveals the truth to him about his arrival on Earth. Despite her explanation and placing a positive spin on those events and his upbringing, Brandon leaves in a rage, claiming that they lied to him all these years.

Brandon visits Caitlyn once again at her house, who tells him that her mother has forbidden her from talking to him. Furious, a masked Brandon murders Caitlyn’s mother in the town’s diner where she works. During the first of the counselling sessions at the school, Merilee becomes concerned about Brandon's lack of remorse about his injuries to Caitlyn, and tells Brandon that she is required to report his progress to the local Police. 

Later that evening Brandon appears at Merilee's home unannounced to intimidate her into not reporting her concerns to the Police. A short time later, her husband Noah (Matt Jones) returns home after shooting some pool and enjoying a few beers at the local bar with Kyle and other friends. Noah finds Brandon hiding in their closet and furiously attempts to return him to his parents. Brandon attacks Noah in the driveway of their home, but escapes in his car. Its not long however, before Brandon catches up with the fleeing vehicle and kill Noah by wrecking his car - levitating it, turning it upside down and dropping it from a significant height with him inside. 

Tori and Kyle learn of Noah's death the next morning and are alarmed when Brandon does not emotionally react to the news of the death of his favourite uncle. Kyle attempts to explain to Tori that Brandon must've killed Noah, but she won't have any of it, so leading to a rift in their relationship. To make amends, Kyle plans a hunting trip with Brandon the following weekend under the guise of repairing his relationship with his son. While in a secluded woodland area, Kyle shoots Brandon in the back of the head only to have the bullet bounce off, unharming Brandon. Heartbroken and distraught, Brandon overpowers his father and using his laser vision burns through Kyle's eyes and straight out of the back of his head, dead!

Meanwhile, Tori is visited by the local Sheriff, Deputy Deever (Gregory Alan Williams) who shows her photographs of a symbol found at both the diner and Noah's accident scene - Brandon's signature mark. After sending the Sheriff away without a warrant, Tori searches through Brandon's room and finds his notebook, which contains drawings depicting graphic acts of violence and the various murders in addition to his repeated scribblings of his now familiar signature mark. Finally coming to terms with the full extent of Brandon’s involvement in the recent deaths, Tori frantically attempts to call her husband only for Brandon to answer his phone and inform her that her husband is dead.

Brandon returns home and begins destroying the house around Tori. She manages to find some temporary refuge to call the Police. Upon the Sheriff's arrival Brandon is seen to be levitating above the house. He sweeps in and brutally murders the Sheriff and then another responding officer. Escaping through a bedroom window, and landing awkwardly, and limping Tori makes it to the barn where the spaceship is located. Having remembered that it cut him, Tori arms herself with a sharp piece of the spaceship that she breaks off to use as a makeshift dagger.

Brandon finds Tori in the barn, who tries to settle him down. Tori assures Brandon that she still loves him no matter what, and that she has every confidence that there still remains good inside him. Once they embrace, Tori tries to stab him from behind with the makeshift dagger but fails. Enraged by her betrayal, Brandon holds onto Tori and flies her high above the clouds and then lets her fall to her to her death as a plane approaches him. Brandon crashes that plane into the Breyer farm, killing everyone onboard.

In the aftermath, news reports about the deaths of Brandon's parents and his other victims are attributed to the crash. Brandon is seen eating a cookie from the back of an ambulance, with his trademark signature inscribed on the planes fuselage in blood. Final reports show Brandon, nicknamed 'Brightburn' in the media, creating havoc, destroying buildings, setting forests ablaze, killing numerous people and leaving his signature on the landscape - seemingly afraid of no-one and nothing - because after all, he's only a young lad!

Basically 'Brightburn' is an alternative twist on 'Superman' with our red caped mild mannered Superhero out to save the world and do good by all of humankind is replaced by a similarly red caped evil inclined Superhero out to destroy the world and bring all of humankind to its knees. They both crash landed somewhere near small town America from some far away solar system, on a farm, were raised by good well meaning gentle folk, and from a young age came to the realisation that they were both special and possessed super powers - bullet proof, super human strength, stamina, speed, the ability to fly, laser vision, and an invincibility to anything man made. One chose to do good with his powers and the other pure evil. It's an interesting premise, that I was pleasantly surprised by given the average Reviews read prior. The film doesn't stop short on the gory aspects of Brandon's extreme acts of violence towards his victims, and at a lean 91 minutes running time the film moves along a good pace. The supporting characters are however, one dimensional, and in Brightburn it seems no-one is intelligent enough to spot a no-good early teen wreaking murder and mayhem most foul in the local community - not the Counsellor, nor the Sheriff, and not even his parents until it costs them their lives.  That said, it's good to see an alternative Superhero offering in this day and age of Superhero overload, and view the crowded genre from the other side of the tracks. You don't need to watch this on the big screen and can easily wait for the BluRay, download or your streaming service to catch it from the comfort of your own couch or mobile device. If successful the Producers have hinted at a sequel already, which was partially set up in a mid-credits sequence starring Michael Rooker as The Big T, an online TV channel conspiracy theorist and broadcaster.

'Brightburn' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard, from a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-