February 2015 - Now Showing: The Puni…No wait, Taken…No that’s not it either. Oh, The Equalizer

By Andy Wise of Angry Men Reviews

Before I start I want you all to know that I like this movie. It is a good action flick that understands that a good chunk of what makes an action sequence enjoyable is the anticipation of the action, not just the action itself. This movie lets you sit there and go “Oh shit, you done fucked up, here it comes!”, and that foreplay makes the climax of the hero kicking the shit out of a bad guy even better. I think there is some relationship advice in there somewhere, but I digress.

I say this because what I’m about to write is going to sound like criticism, and it is because I’m a fucking critic, but even as I say these things I want you to remember that I really liked this movie and it was an enjoyable two hours of film watching. How many fucking “Ex-spy/special forces/assassin trying to live a normal life” action heroes do we need? When are bad guys going to learn “You know this guy just plowed through a good chunk of our guys like nothing, maybe we should just leave him alone and write off our losses”. Nooooo these fuckers just keep throwing henchman after henchman at bad asses then go “Well I’ll just kill their wife/kid/dog, that will teach them!” Yeah, that is a fucking good idea, why don’t you just give them a chainsaw, bend over, and let them fuck you with it.

So if this formula is so overused why is this movie decent? Well first off it is a reboot without feeling like it is a reboot. Sure the series that was made back in 1985-1989 was pretty popular, but it never reached that “Classic” status that many other properties that they talk about rebooting (I’m looking at you “Ghostbusters”). This keeps it from being bogged down by heavy expectations to live up to. This lets them pull what Marvel did with “Guardians of the Galaxy”, pretty much make a completely new property while building off of a decent foundation by reworking the original story to a more modern audience.

So in the end this is a reboot that can become even better than the source material it is drawing on and I hope it gets popular enough that Sony continues the story. If only Marvel could make a “Punisher” movie this good.