Peppermint

Trump the Movie

Grade: C –

Director: Pierre Morel

Starring: Jennifer Garner, John Gallagher Jr. and John Ortiz

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 42 min.

A malformed mashup of Batman Begins, Kill Bill, and Law Abiding Citizen, Peppermint is a gender-switching, reprehensible revenge fantasy about “virtuous” America rising up against such Trump-tailored targets as Mexican gangs, prosecutors, judges, and cops (everybody except the mainstream media, it appears). Many of these groups get their comeuppance (mostly excessive) because they failed at their jobs for reasons both incompetent and corrupt, qualities that this film shares in abundance.

The film’s fulcrum is that if you just know the wrong person, you and your family are liable to get gunned down by Latino drug dealers while enjoying ice cream at the local fair. With her husband and daughter dead, Riley North (Jennifer Garner) watches the killers go free and herself sent to psych ward. Riley escapes, retreats overseas, joins some fight clubs, and returns five years later to exact vengeance on everyone in the system who wronged her.

Even as a base revenge fever dream, Peppermint misses the mark by showing Riley dispatching scores of miscellaneous minions while many of her specific targets are slain off-screen. That bungling is particularly bizarre in the case of a couple of corrupt prosecutors, who we learn about their transgressions and fates as a passing mention during a conversation. Heck, even Riley’s metamorphosis from Linda Hamilton in The Terminator to Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 occurs via exposition and a brief flashback.

Riley’s trail of reprisal becomes well-publicized, and director Pierre Morel (Taken, natch) tries to tack on a public conflict over whether Riley is a violent murderer or a justified avenging angel, a false choice belied by common sense. Peppermint is more sour than sweet, a pile distasteful agitprop that could have been produced by the most radical recesses of an alt-right think tank.

The Equalizer

I have a very particular set of skills ... 

not including my wardrobe.

Grade: B –

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Starring: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz and David Harbour

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 11 min.

The only reference point today’s film audiences may have to The Equalizer is that it’s the television program that caused Rob Reiner’s character in The Wolf of Wall Street to launch into a profane tirade if anyone interrupted him watching it.

The late ‘80s TV series starring the late Edward Woodward now gets its own big screen treatment from director Antoine Fuqua, who directed Denzel Washington’s Oscar-winning turn in Training Day.Washington reteams with Fuqua in The Equalizer to assume the role of Robert McCall, a meticulous, middle-aged widower who works in a big box home improvement store by day and sits alone in a corner cafe reading classic literature by night.

When a Russian pimp brutalizes Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz, Kick-Ass), a young hooker harbouring a kind heart and pop star ambitions who hangs out in McCall’s nocturnal diner, McCall reluctantly springs into action … the sort of action that involves slaughtering five members of the Russian mob in under 30 seconds.

That gets the attention of the kingpin back in Mother Russia, who dispatches Teddy (Marton Csokas), his head henchman, to track down the mystery man dispensing with his hired help and disrupting his nefarious business enterprises.

Unfortunately for the Bolshevik baddies, McCall possesses a secret backstory and a very particular set of skills, especially involving the use of power tools and assorted hardware that he employs to starting serving justice on crooked cops and robbers alike.

Indeed, it’s the sort of role Liam Neeson plays nowadays when he’s not busy. And notwithstanding its TV predecessor, Fuqua fashions his Equalizer as a standard vigilante throwback not far removed from Death Wish and Dirty Harry. McCall blows through a cavalcade of Euro-fodder without much in the way of impediments or intrigue. McCall’s one-man-gang upends not only the Russians’ prostitution ring, but also their money laundering hideout and oil tankers.

What equalizes this otherwise formulaic film is the typically captivating Washington, from his quiet counsel to Teri to his taut tête-à-tête with Teddy. Indeed, it’s beguiling to just watch McCall meticulously arrange the silverware at his usual diner table each evening … or stare into his cold eyes as he digs a corkscrew into someone’s mandible or pelts another with a nail gun.

Neither McCall or The Equalizer say very much about our nasty zeitgeist. But all things being equal, there are worse ways to spend a trip to the movie theater … or The Home Depot.

Law Abiding Citizen

I just wuv pinchin' those chubby widdle cheeks...

Grade: D

Director: F. Gary Gray

Starring: Jaime Foxx, Gerard Butler, Leslie Bibb, Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, and Viola Davis

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

When ironically-designated Law Abiding Citizen Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler, his chipmunk cheeks duly packed for the winter) watches his wife and daughter get slaughtered, and one of the killers plea bargain with Philadelphia prosecutor Nick Rice (Jaime Foxx, sleepwalking) in exchange for testimony against his less-culpable partner, Shelton stews and schemes for 10 years before hatching his elaborate brand of righteous, Saw-esque comeuppance against the murderers and members of the legal system.

It all makes for an attempted reprise of the vigilante vengeance flicks of the 1970s. Problem is in Death Wish, Charles Bronson didn’t take aim at criminals, attorneys, and judges alike, which Shelton does with disconcerting relish. For his first film since 2005’s woeful Be Cool, director F. Gary Gray unwisely chooses to team with chronic hack Kurt Wimmer, whose short-lived, checkered screenwriting credits already include Sphere, The Recruit, Ultraviolet, and the especially retched Street Kings.

Besides the gaping plot holes and silly contrivances (chief among them how Shelton is able to still carry out his explosive carnage from behind bars), this wingnut’s wet dream fails as either a moral object lesson or a competent actioner. There is no ethical equivalence between Shelton’s personal tragedy and an indefensible rampage against innocents only a Montana militiaman could rationalize. And, all’s not well (or justified) merely because it ends with Rice learning to be a better daddy and not cut deals with killers.

As she did in Doubt, Viola Davis brings gravitas to a brief role (this time as Philly’s besieged mayor), while she also teaches her leading men a lesson or two about acting. Unfortunately, Law Abiding Citizen is about any but; it’s reprehensible, nihilistic torture-porn only the Timothy McVeighs of the world could love.

Neil Morris