THE EQUALIZER 3
(15) 109mins
★★☆☆☆
FLOUR explosions, spear guns and an accidental electrocution — there are not many ways ultimate avenger Robert McCall hasn’t vanquished a foe.
This time, we find the former US government assassin — and eternal napkin folder — in the picturesque Amalfi Coast.
Robert, played by Denzel Washington, has traded the gloomy streets of Boston and is recovering from a gunshot wound in Italy after a brutal butchering spree at a nearby vineyard.
Tattooed goons
During his narrow escape, he passes out on the street and, oddly, is taken to a local doctor instead of a hospital after being found by police officer Gio Bonucci.
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Neither officer or doctor questions why Robert has been shot in the back or why he has a cache of lethal weapons in the boot of his car.
Instead, our hero somehow wins their trust by responding “I don’t know” when asked if he is “a good man or a bad man”.
Unable to walk without a cane, Robert takes time out at the charming Italian coast and soon falls in love with the quiet way of life there.
But the local town’s peaceful paradise is being plagued by a gang of tattooed goons on motorcycles, who belong to the local Mafia clan.
Alongside their plans to flood Italy with a “Jihadi drug” and build casinos, hotels and tourist attractions, they also extort locals and burn their businesses.
“They are like cancer,” says Robert’s doctor-turned-friend Enzo Arisio.
“And like cancer, there is no cure.”
Those words are enough to kickstart the killing machine back into action and he exacts revenge upon boneheaded baddies in a number of imaginative ways.
Gory but disappointing, this final chapter of The Equalizer series was a film that not even legendary actor Denzel, nor his superhuman counterpart, could save.
With a sluggish storyline, peculiar plot holes and villains who turn from callously cruel to child-like within seconds, this is a film with many problems.
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It is topped off with a poor ending that will leave many glad Robert McCall is finally retiring and leaving the genre’s future in John Wick’s more-than-capable hands.
Cobweb
(15) 88mins
★★☆☆☆
THIS Halloween-set horror centres on Peter (Woody Norman), an isolated boy whose world seems under threat at every turn.
At school he’s bullied and at home he’s under the thumb of overbearing parents (Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) very clearly harbouring a secret.
Their home has all the ominous trappings of a house of horror that suggest something is hiding within its structure.
Peter begins to hear a disturbing presence and fear puts him under its influence, causing a substitute teacher (Cleopatra Coleman) to become concerned for him.
It’s a credit to the actors that they managed to inject some intrigue into their roles.
Woody, so charming in C’mon C’mon, has wide-eyed anxiety while Lizzy brings the same intensity she showcased in series Castle Rock as Peter’s fretful mother.
But Chris Thomas Devlin’s script fails to provide enough context to make its gory final act feel at all plausible.
Cobweb’s biggest strength is director Samuel Bodin’s ability to maintain sinister visuals and a despondent mood throughout, but the plot and characters are as flimsy as the title.
Otto Baxter: Not A F***ing Horror Story
(15) 84mins
★★★☆☆
BRIMMING with heart, empathy and humour this feature-length documentary follows 35-year-old Otto Baxter over the course of six years as he writes and directs his first short film, The Puppet Asylum.
Otto, who has Down’s syndrome, has had much of his life captured on film, including 2009’s Otto: Love, Lust and Las Vegas.
The directors of that film, Peter Beard and Bruce Fletcher have become close friends and now want to help him get his own big screen Victorian-themed, comedy-horror biopic project made.
Despite his wicked sense of comic timing and all-round amenability, Otto finds it hard to articulate some of his lived experiences without defaulting to joking and fooling around.
But through his own creativity, we start seeing life through his lens, meeting significant figures in his life including Alex, the birth mother who gave him up for adoption, and his other mother, the devoted Lucy Baxter who raised him.
Charming, talented and adept, as well as changing attitudes, the very funny Otto also can’t fail to make you laugh.