THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Solid Kurosawa/Sturges Remake

Seven new samurai with six-shooters!!!

The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Dir. Antoine Fuqua
Scr. Nic Pizzolatto, Richard Wenk
Starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke,
Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Byung-hun, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo,
Martin Sensmeier, Haley Bennett, Peter Sarsgaard

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Akira Kurosawa's epic 1954 Seven Samurai weaves the stirring tale of a group of ronin defending a town of simple folk in 14th Century Japan from hordes of bandits. It is indeed a classic, a masterpiece and quite easily one of the greatest action movies of all time. When John Sturges remade the picture as a western in 1960 with Yul Brynner taking the role originally played by Toshiro Mifune, he didn't quite craft anything in the tour de force department, but he gave us an oater that's as iconic of the old west as it is a rip-snorter.




Antoine Fuqua's 2016 remake might not match the Sturges picture, but it's still a solid, kick-ass western and in its own way gains a bit on the delivery front by peppering us with an almost ludicrous body count, all very efficiently directed by the skillful Training Day helmer.

A bit of Lee-Byung-hun goes a long way.

Denzel Washington takes the sword/reins from Mifune and Brynner, acquitting himself ably as the bounty hunter who recruits a perfect cocktail of miscreants to rescue a small town from an evil land baron (delectably played by he of the perpetual sneer, Peter Sarsgaard). The fine all-star cast includes such robust recognizable talents as Chris Pratt (the smart-ass), Ethan Hawke (the sharpshooter) and Vincent D'Onofrio (the burly munitions expert), adds a nice bit of Asian martial arts/blade play from Lee Byung-hun and some very welcome guns-a-blazing from the babe-o-licious Haley Bennett. (If there's anything more boner-or-wet-crotch-inducing than babes with guns, I have yet to discover what that might be.)

A babe with a gun.
A babe hell-bent on vengeance.
Always win-win.

Speaking of boners and wet crotches, when Haley Bennet says, "I seek righteousness, but I'll take revenge," I cannot imagine anyone in the audience, neither boys nor girls, feeling anything less than glorious gooseflesh. It's to the credit of screenwriters Nic Pizzolatto and Richard Wenk that some lovely revenge backstories come to the fore to provide added oomph, not just for the comely Bennett, but Washington's character also - he's got himself a humdinger of reason to wreak havoc.

Fuqua and his team definitely go the distance with the humdinger screenplay and serve up several truly spectacular action set pieces, not the least of which feature horses and their riders thundering across the plains of a big old American west.

There's really nothing new under the sun here, but goddamn, it's a lot of fun.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

The Magnificent Seven was a Gala Presentation at TIFF 2016 and will be released wide by Paramount Pictures.

SOUTHPAW - Review By Meraj Dhir - The Film Corner's Ghee Time Scribe Craps on Fuqua

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's GHEE-TIME again as Klymkiw is too shagged to write and the Film Corner's trusty Ghee-Time Columnist, Harvard PhD candidate Meraj Dhir steps in to take a solid crap upon Antoine Fuqua's by-the-numbers boring melodrama SOUTHPAW.

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more info on MERAJ DHIR

Southpaw (2015)
Dir. Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker,
Rachel McAdams, Victor Ortiz
Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson

Guest Review
By Meraj Dhir
The Film Corner's
Ghee Time Columnist

If you've seen the trailer for Southpaw, there's no reason to see the intolerably dull film. The trailer deftly encapsulates what otherwise takes 124 lugubrious minutes to slog through. However, if you're amenable to gazing at Jake Gyllenhaal's chiseled torso, Curtis "Fifty Cent" Jackson's ivory white veneers and Forest Whitaker spewing out a veritable geyser of scene-chomping dialogue, all amidst plenty of predictable boxing melodrama with dashes of crime sprinkled on, then please help yourself.

Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer, Training Day) is one of the most reliably boring paint-by-numbers directors working in major motion pictures today, but he cant be solely blamed for this dross since the screenplay, penned by Kurt Sutter (Sons of Anarchy) resembles a computer-engineered piece of software (the softer elements of said ware residing mostly between Sutter's ears) to generate a generic fight picture.

Bursting with the force of a hamster in a microwave oven, all the necessary by-rote fucking-up, redemption and rehabilitation plot points, shoehorned into all the "proper" places, results in a movie we've seen many times before. Though it will please anyone who buys into the generic rules belched out by screenwriting gurus like Robert McKee, the rest of us (unless we're as brain dead as this movie's filmmakers) can snore through every second of this film.

Here's a handy checklist of the events of the film.

I bet you haven't seen any of this before:

Fighter loses everything because he is a fuck-up.

The losses include the death of his wife to the bullet of a thug and custody of his daughter (because on both counts he's a fuck-up of the highest order and brings tragedy upon himself).

He requires one last fight to make his comeback.

In order to achieve this, our hero must accept humility and control his anger in and out of the ring. Cue rousing training montage a la any Rocky film (take your pick - all or one).

Crawl to a dull climactic fighting match with plenty of in and out of the ring editing and bargain basement Raging Bull camera pyrotechnics a la Raging Bull. This might be enough to keep one's attention, but bothering to do so instead of nodding off will merely hammer home the fact that the movie has been solely crafted to offer Jake Gyllenhaal a decent Oscar Nomination and/or free training to get into the best physical condition of his life.

There are movies, like Gavin O'Connor's Warrior and David O. Russell's The Fighter, which push the genre forward, but Southpaw does little more than vaguely hold one's attention until one realizes it's doing little more than fulfilling the aforementioned checklist.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Southpaw is a Weinstein Company release through eOne.

THE EQUALIZER (WORLD PREMIERE TIFF 2014 - TIFF GALA) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Sometimes a peaceful man must
KILL RUSSIANS!

The Equalizer (2014)
Dir. Antoine Fuqua
Scr. Richard Wenk
Starring: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour, Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo, David Meunier, Haley Bennett, Allen Maldonado, Dan Bilzerian

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If you're going to make a movie about a retired CIA intelligence operative (Denzel Washington, sporting a nicely-shaved pate), living a quality life of mega-Zen-O-Rama in Boston, hanging out nightly in a quaint greasy spoon wherein he reads classic literature recommended to him by his now-dead wife, befriending a sweet teenage whore (Chloë Grace Moretz) "owned" by the Russian Mob, but who could be the daughter he never had, save for the parts where she spreads her legs for a myriad of gross clients and suffers savage beatings at the hands of her despicable Putin-like pimp, then, my friends, if your movie revolves around a man such as this, it is absolutely imperative that you give this lethal, morally incorruptible gent a job in a big box Home Depot-like store since sooner or later, he's going to take out the entire Russkie criminal underworld and it will be ever-so helpful (for him) and delightful (for us) when he's forced to kill a mess o' bad guys by utilizing what one normally finds in such insanely expansive shopping oases: various tools, hammers, drills, saws and (my favourite). . .

NAIL GUNS.

The mind boggles.

Well, as derivative as Richard Wenk's still-efficient screenplay proves to be, director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) runs with the sturdy coat hanger handed to him by the aforementioned scribe and offers up a genuinely great macho-man action film that dazzles with a perfectly-pitched directorial style and skill-level to put all the hacks and poseurs who can't direct action to complete and utter shame.

Fuqua knows exactly where to place his camera, holds nicely on wide shots that display rigorous fight choreography of the finest pedigree and only uses mediums, closeups and cuts when he needs to for the purposes of rendering dramatic beats. Wenk even allows for a Quentin Tarantino rip-off, which is, in fact, a rip-off of many films before the crime-loving auteur began to employ the delicious technique of endless dialogue twixt opposing forces and eventually exploding into the most mind-blowing extremities of violence imaginable.

Fuqua's picture is so well directed that all the cliches and rip-offs are water off a duck's back. It's first-rate entertainment which allows Denzel Washington the opportunity to rescue Chloë Grace Moretz and put a dent in the Mob's business dealings to a point where a vicious trouble-shooter from the Old Country sails into town with an endless supply of assassins who Denzel is allowed to dispatch - one after another, and in ways that might make even the most Liberal of audiences buy the rabid anti-Russia propaganda hook, line and sinker.

Vaguely based on the 80s cult TV show, this has "action franchise" written all over it. That's all well and good, but I'd love to see Fuqua direct Washington in a movie that actually had a great script a la the dirty 70s practitioners of violent existential male angst. I doubt we'll find it in a franchise, but for now, I'll hold fast onto the pleasures The Equalizer delivers and dreamily imagine a day when I see a movie truly worthy of these two supremely gifted men.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

The Equalizer enjoys its Gala world premiere at TIFF 2014 and will be released by Sony Pictures.

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OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Remarkably stupid and propagandistic American action thriller delivers its goods in a honest fashion. It's an entertaining piece of crap.

A good day to die hard and kill half the population of North Korea when they take control of the White House

Olympus Has Fallen (2013) **
Dir. Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Rick Yune, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Dylan McDermott, Melissa Leo, Ashley Judd

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Olympus Has Fallen is - hands down - one of the stupidest movies made during the last decade and yet, in spite of its zero I.Q. the picture manages to deliver exactly what it promises; violence, American Propaganda, more violence, dreadful dialogue and even more violence (much of the aforementioned bone crunching and blood-letting handled decently).

Essentially, what we're served up is tale involving Secret Service Dude Gerard Butler. Having been busted down to a desk job after a mission goes horribly wrong, our hero finds himself conveniently located round the corner from the White House as North Korean terrorists mount an armed assault upon Washington, D.C.

Revenge and redemption are on the way.

Butler's best friend, President Aaron Eckhart and a few other high-on-the-totem-pole mucky-mucks are kidnapped by smarmy North Korean terrorist Rick Yune whilst his loyal hordes of faceless Koreans kill innocent bystanders and every single armed man in and around the White House. The Koreans are so vicious that they go to every dispatched American body and blow the brains out of the corpses - just to make sure. Worst of all it seems the nasty Korean pig wants to set off American nukes in a manner which will ensure consequences of the most dire kind.

Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett fret in the Pentagon while Butler infiltrates the White House and for the lion's share of the picture's running time, brutally kills one faceless Korean after another. In one of the most hilariously vicious scenes in movie history, Butler bludgeons someone repeatedly with the bust of Abraham Lincoln.

Between acts of violence, Butler growls zingers at the terrorist like: "Why don't you and I play a game of Fuck Off. You first." He also has some choice lines lobbed at the bureaucrats in the Pentagon who balk at providing him Top Secret information, even though he's their only hope: "I have the proverbial need to fuckin' know!"

Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) is a mediocre talent, but here he sets up a few genuinely decent suspense and action sequences. I have to admit being on the edge of my seat more than a few times. There's a dark, grainy mise-en-scene to the picture I also enjoyed.

The large all-star cast acquits themselves as expected. Gerard Butler is a more than average actor who finally gets his groove as an action star. David Yune makes for a deliciously smarmy villain as does Dylan McDermott. The balance of the cast all put in familiar competent performances. The biggest disappointment is Ashley Judd - not because of anything she does, but because she's such a radiant, sexy and fine actress and she's wasted in a thankless role.

Is the movie propaganda? It sure is. For some reason, though, maybe because it doesn't purport to be truthful in order to distort like Ben Affleck's bonheaded Argo, I was able to enjoy it on its own moronic terms.

"Olympus Has Fallen" is currently in wide theatrical release via VVS Films.