My mistake. Fuqua's adaptation of the TV show 'The Equalizer' was so good, so rousing that I had, dare I say, hopes for his take on Kurosawa's original, and Sturges' remake / homage.
Before Scorsese's 'Cape fear' and more to the point, 'The departed', I was not a fan of remakes, and at the time of watching Scorsese's take on J Lee Thompson's 'Cape Fear' in the 90s, I'd not discovered Kurosawa. Still preferred the original to the remake, in spite of watching the remakes first, in terms of watching both 'The Magnificent Seven', as well as 'Cape Fear'.
Another mistake I made, in terms of approaching this work, was to raise my expectations from noting the involvement of Nic Pizzolato (both seasons of 'True Detective' with the jury being out on whether seasons 2 was good, or even necessary to follow-up his master-work on season 1; 2 episodes of the fantastic 'The Killing') and Richard Wenk ('Equalizer'; remake of 'The Mechanic', which was pretty good; '16 Blocks', which was not bad, yet underseen/under-appreciated: now I'm curious about how his involvement has influenced the upcoming 'Jack Reacher: Never Go Back') in the writing department; the presence of Denzel, Hawke, D'Onofrio & the under-used Sarsgaard in the ensemble.
Was looking forward to how the iconic Elmer Bernstein soundtrack was gonna be used. Well.....
Let me cover the part I thought were good about the movie.
+ The acting - Denzel, D'Onofrio, Pratt, Hawke, Byung-hun Lee (another western after 'The good the bad the weird')
+ Sequences between, and banter among Pratt & Garcia-Rulfo, Pratt & Hawke, Hawke & Lee
+ The mid-runtime action sequence in-town, and the final 20 minutes.
+ The somewhat unique scoring from veteran James Horner and Simon Franglen.
What didn't work for this (but should have, if treated right):
Still, worth one watch at the local big screen. 1. To be fair, ppl I watched this with, who'd either had limited/no exposure to what came before (see above) did enjoy this movie, and felt it was worth the price of admission.
Before Scorsese's 'Cape fear' and more to the point, 'The departed', I was not a fan of remakes, and at the time of watching Scorsese's take on J Lee Thompson's 'Cape Fear' in the 90s, I'd not discovered Kurosawa. Still preferred the original to the remake, in spite of watching the remakes first, in terms of watching both 'The Magnificent Seven', as well as 'Cape Fear'.
Another mistake I made, in terms of approaching this work, was to raise my expectations from noting the involvement of Nic Pizzolato (both seasons of 'True Detective' with the jury being out on whether seasons 2 was good, or even necessary to follow-up his master-work on season 1; 2 episodes of the fantastic 'The Killing') and Richard Wenk ('Equalizer'; remake of 'The Mechanic', which was pretty good; '16 Blocks', which was not bad, yet underseen/under-appreciated: now I'm curious about how his involvement has influenced the upcoming 'Jack Reacher: Never Go Back') in the writing department; the presence of Denzel, Hawke, D'Onofrio & the under-used Sarsgaard in the ensemble.
Was looking forward to how the iconic Elmer Bernstein soundtrack was gonna be used. Well.....
Let me cover the part I thought were good about the movie.
+ The acting - Denzel, D'Onofrio, Pratt, Hawke, Byung-hun Lee (another western after 'The good the bad the weird')
+ Sequences between, and banter among Pratt & Garcia-Rulfo, Pratt & Hawke, Hawke & Lee
+ The mid-runtime action sequence in-town, and the final 20 minutes.
+ The somewhat unique scoring from veteran James Horner and Simon Franglen.
What didn't work for this (but should have, if treated right):
- What came before, in terms of the original, the John Sturges remake and an unofficial local remake (which was an iconic landmark of sorts, 'Sholay') making it possible to have multiple frames of comparison. What came before, in terms of Fuqua's own (superior) body of work ('Equalizer'; 'Training day'; 'Tears of the sun'; 'King Arthur'; 'Brooklyn's Finest'; for all their flaws, even 'The replacement killers' and 'Bait'). What came before this, definitely does not help its case. What came before in the recent past, in terms of westerns - the remake of '3:10 to Yuma', which was fantastic; 'The Revenant' (a western of sorts); 'The H8ful 8'; 'Bone Tomahawk'; 'Meek's Cutoff'; 'Django Unchained'; 'The proposition'; 'Open Range' (Kevin Costner is almost ubiquitous in westerns - read further in this section); Cormac McCarthy's perceived-unfilmable works got translated to the screen with both 'The Road' & 'No Country for Old men' turning out to be nothing short of fantastic; Tommy Lee Jones acting in and directing (not all) 'The Missing' (inho, Ron Howard's best yet), 'The Homesman' and 'The 3 burials of Melquiades Estrada'; 'The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford'; the Coen bros. remake of 'True Grit' (for my money, better than the original); 'The Salvation' (Euro-western, with the great Mads Mikkelsen); the 80s and the 90s gave us 'Unforgiven', 'Silverado', 'Dances with Wolves', 'Wyatt Earp' (the last 3 with Kevin Costner) and 'Tombstone' (initially perceived as a low-rent 'Wyatt Earp' or low-rent 'Gunfight at the OK Corral', and turning out to be so much more, especially in the cult circuit), 'Maverick' etc.; TV gave us 'Justified' and 'Deadwood', among others including the Kevin Costner + Bill Paxton mini-series 'Hatfields & McCoys'. Even the underseen/reviled 'Appaloosa' (Ed Harris acting and directing, Viggo Mortensen, a miscast Renée Zellweger); and Western- lites or mash- ups like Kevin Costner's 'The Postman'; Sam Raimi's 'The Quick and the dead' with Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Leonardo DiCaprio & Russell Crowe; 'Slow West', which has been getting mixed reviews (another Euro-western?); Walter Hill's 'Last man standing' (another Kurosawa nod, along with nods to Sergio Leone's remake of Kurosawa's work 'Yojimbo' as 'A fistful of dollars') and the popcorn-mainstream underseen/underrated 'The Lone Ranger', from the genius mind of Gore Verbinski (who also lovingly made the animated western-of-sorts, 'Rango'). All, imho, tough (mostly-recent) acts to follow, but most importantly, part of an ongoing trend of good quality material to mine from, if Kurosawa's material was not going to prove enough. And yet.......
- The (lack of) characterization of (in descending order) Peter Sarsgaard's character (why cast an actor of his calibre if this is the role you want him to play - that of a cardboard-cutout villain), Haley Bennett's character (just plain sad), Denzel's own (though the actor tried, imho, to rise above the lack of material, a surprise, considering all the material he has been provided before by Fuqua), Byung-hun Lee's, D'Onofrio's and the townspeople's. Even a derivate local remake, 'Sholay', managed to conjure up memorable supporting characters like one played by AK Hangal, another played by Sachin, and yet another by Satyen Kappu; each of whom only got about 2/3 scenes in which to make a mark, in the 70s, and boy did they go all out!
- The set/production design, which gave me the impression of being a set, rather than real locations (the expansive outdoors, on the other hand, have been located and shot well by DOP Mauro Fiore); which works for a movie like 'The Quick and the dead', but not for something like this.
- What's the point in remaking something iconic, if you're not gonna update it for a new generation, and use the tools you have to command? This, to me, was a colossal misfire, redeemed only by a few things (listed above).
Still, worth one watch at the local big screen. 1. To be fair, ppl I watched this with, who'd either had limited/no exposure to what came before (see above) did enjoy this movie, and felt it was worth the price of admission.