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Where did it all go wrong?

The Good

What happened to 2-time Academy Award winner Denzel?  I reserve the right to use his first name, of course, having been his Biggest Fan for many years with the certification to prove it.  He, acting god, Sexiest Man Alive 1996, one of the few A-listers who seemed to have integrity for the role he chose.  He of Malcolm X, and Glory. He of Man on Fire which is surely the most satisfying revenge story of recent Hollywood yore.  Even The Equalizer was interesting enough to stay on point in terms of Mr.Washington's career.  So how soon did it all go wrong after that?  The exact time may be debted, but the fact of it remains, Denzel Washington has been in a downturn move-quality rise for nearly a decade.


The Bad

My first case for the prosecution has to be the god-awfully embarrassing mess-of-scriptless-tropes-jumbled-in a-meaningless-mess that is the ill-judged remake The Magnificent Seven 2016. With a story so simple, infinite monkeys would only take an hour, they still managed to make it confusing.  It took two hours to show us the recruitment phase, the fight and the conclusion for that all the story comprises in its three acts.  As ever nowadays, the plot managed to ignore its own holes to focus on the gunfights, which were this a John Wick clone or anything with bullet time may only struggle, but the action scenes here are mediocre at best, and well, as a Western and a vehicle for Denzel it was very very bad.  There was nothing wrong with Denzel's performance, similarly to his co-stars Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke and Hodor, but this film was just so flat and pointless that I didn't even notice when it ended. So why Denzel?

 Read more about my thoughts on remakes here - LINK

 Chris Pratt doing it wrong -


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The Ugly

Next up is 2 Guns of 2013, a buddy movie with Marky "Mark" Wahlberg "Mark" Mark which cannot help but draw comparisons to such as Training Day which is so much better that one could sensibly imagine we are discussing different media entirely.   In this case, the script abandons explanation entirely in preference of embracing the ridiculous.  While there is some chemistry between the leads, in scenes it is far too brief and also relies on too much suspension of disbelief in character motivation.  Even the presence of sometime icon Edward James Olmos doing irrational things cannot save this film from the Rotten Tomatoes rating it truly deserves.

Let There Be Eli 

How depressing would it be for me to go on and on about bad movies?  Where there is darkness there must also be light and there is a light in the darkness with the 2010s' The Book of Eli, which is enough of a story to provide a nice twist and still have fan-theories about the ending and memes galore.  This was a proper Denzel Washington movie, as I'm sure you'll all agree.  

The Bad and Ugly

Finally, we have Roman J Israel, a movie that is simply too arrogant for its own good. Again Denzel portrays the character well, but the script is fairly lazy - failing to clearly explain whether the main character is autistic or not as a clear case in point as well as relying on the usual stereotypes and some pretty pedestrian pacing.  And what about that name, is this unsearchable name just a blatant attack on piracy? 

 Read about my controversial thoughts on piracy here - LINK
It's not over, it's a long way from being over.  Maybe we will see a little more dross in amongst the brilliance but isn't that to be expected.    The real problem is, as usual, the Hollywood mission becoming exposed, the fact that they're not simply unable to make new ideas, but clearly unwilling too.  As a consequence, as a glorious consequence, maybe we get to see Mr Washington on the new future of storytelling, TV.  
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