Cranky T-Rex's Blog

After you watch The Equalizer , you never look at a Home Depot quite the same way again. It was one of those movies that looked like it would at best be mediocre, and then surprisingly turned out to be an inventive, fun little Taken -wannabe starring Denzel Washington of all people. While it ended with a sequel hook, it didn't seem to be the kind of thing that would ever get one, and yet, here we are with The Equalizer 2 . As you may have guessed from my previous writings, I'm always skeptical of sequels, particularly when it comes to sleeper hits like The Equalizer that seem like perfectly self-contained stories. We saw how the Taken franchise descended into garbage real fast, for example.  Then again, we've got John Wick 2 now to show everybody how it's done: keep what's good, expand the world, don't repeat the first movie beat for beat. The trailers for Equalizer 2 didn't look like it would repeat the first movie beat for beat, so that was goo...

It's remake inception this weekend, as they released a remake of The Magnificent Seven , which itself was a Western remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai .  My friend Allan Bourdius of theirfinesthour.net calls this new one "The Suitably Multicultural Seven", since this one features a cast that looks like it was handpicked by an SJW statistician. Still, it's hard to imagine where you'd go wrong putting Denzel Washington at the head of anything, and it's hard to think of anyone better suited to play Steve McQueen to his Yul Brenner than Chris Pratt. But, is their combined charisma enough to save this from being yet another garbage remake of a better movie? Is the multicultural cast a warning sign of an SJW-panderfest?  Check out my review to find out: