#1: What is a hoot and holler?

I want to talk about The Equalizer 3

Oct 05, 2023

For the last several months, I’ve been doing a sort of “just kidding… unless?” routine around the concept of starting a newsletter. I don’t know why I’m so scared to be perceived as ridiculous or navel-gazey when I am already publicly on the third season of my second podcast. To be entirely honest, the combination of a) feeling that I was in a rut due to lack of creative output and b) watching Brad launch his very good newsletter made me realize I should just do whatever the hell I want, and what I want is to have a place to write a little something sometimes.

Hoots and Hollers is a newsletter about what’s got me hooting and hollering— while I’ll mostly be writing about movies, I’m leaving the door open to other topics. You can expect about two of these a month, although I’m also leaving the door open to that number being occasionally higher or lower.

The titular The Irishman in The Irishman. — Me leaving the door open to write about *Selling the O.C.* at some point.

As for the name, let me explain…

Hoots and Hollers

About a year ago I made a Letterboxd list called Hoots and Hollers, originally a more personalized list of “movies that make me hoot and holler” but that eventually morphed into what I believe to be a quantifiable Type Of Film.

A hoot and holler is a movie that elicits a “hell yeah” or a round of applause, even (especially) if you’re just at home with nobody to hear it. It is a movie which is about, or includes, a moment of pure triumph. In many hoots and hollers, crime does pay. A hoot and holler doesn’t have to have a happy ending (last half hour of Braveheart) but must then make up for it with an incredible win (killing lots of British soldiers, especially with a big hammer). A hoot and holler must feel the same as saying “booyah!” really loud and meaning it. It’s about getting one over on these guys, and showing them who’s boss. There should be a moment of defiance, which can be bratty and quippy (Indiana Jones) or noble (Toshiro Mifune in Red Beard). A hoot and holler does not have to be good (though some masterpieces qualify), in fact the lifeblood of the hoot and holler is the 3-3.5 star-and-a-heart good time.

Let’s play what may or may not be an elucidating round of Which 2023 Films Qualify?:

Oppenheimer: No, because overall it is too bleak but Emily Blunt’s hearing testimony is a hoot and hollerian scene.

Barbie: No, but might be for someone for whom that speech really worked.

Dumb Money: Yes, structurally a textbook hoot and holler and must be admitted, even though it’s mid.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning: Yes, everything Tom Cruise has ever done as Ethan Hunt in the past decade qualifies for the way he defies God in order to entertain us.

Showing Up: Not in the least, but what a lovely, quiet masterpiece.

Hope that was helpful.

There are technically no genre limitations to the hoot and holler, but certain genres and themes crop up repeatedly:

Political & legal dramas with rousing final speeches/cross-examinations/closing statements/Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men
Heists
Revenge
Underdogs
- Sports of course, but also gladiators and Erin Brockovich
The Most Impressive Action Sequence You Have Ever Seen (Police Story, Shadow, Mad Max: Fury Road)
Competency Porn (Contagion, The Martian)
Men of great honor (samurai, Sully Sullenberger)

My list is a deeply incomplete one and I am open to suggestions, but this is both an evolving notion and is also, ultimately, a matter of the heart. Do I feel it in my gut? As with many such cases, each of us must make our own list.

Robert McCall Me By Your Name

This brings me to the movie I’d like to talk about at greater length today: Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer 3. (spoilers ahead!)

I’d never seen an Equalizer movie, but I was quickly sold on the third installment because it’s set in Italy and uses the song “Volare.” I like this because I love any song that would be played at the Grove1 fountain. From the trailer, we understand that Denzel Washington (I did not at this point know the name of the hero of the Equalizer trilogy, nor that this was an Equalizer film) has a dark past but is now happily living in a beautiful, coastal Italian town, hugging children and saying “ciao ciao” while wearing a new hat. He loves it there and wants to retire, but now he’s got One Last Job which is to protect these nice Italians from the mafia. Then Denzel sticks a gun through a guy’s eyes.

Denzel Washington in his new hat. — New hat.

Despite my enthusiasm for the trailer, deep down I imagined there was no way this movie could deliver what I wanted—surely it would get bogged down in legacy nonsense, surely it would prioritize convoluted mafia stuff over Denzel-walking-around-town stuff, against my express wishes.

I am happy to report that I was wrong.2

After an opening sequence of astonishing violence in an Italian winery, Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is injured and taken in by a kindly, perhaps overly trusting small town Italian doctor.

What proceeds is one of the most delightful hours of film I have experienced this year. Robert McCall does exactly what I dreamed he’d do: he ambles around town, he gets upsold on that previously mentioned wide-brimmed hat, he befriends a nice fishmonger, and after some time he becomes accepted by the community and attends events like a Cinema Paradiso-esque outdoor screening and some kind of fish fry cookout attended by the whole town. People call him Roberto. This is Washington at his most charming—a handsome and magnetic presence with a warm laugh.

The important detail for me is that he frequents an outdoor cafe where he orders TEA instead of coffee. As a devoted tea drinker, this is insane. He’s in Italy! If it were me, I’d pop the Omeprazole and suck up the espresso for fear of being laughed at. I guess they want to emphasize that he’s out of place. The waitress (soon to be a friend) makes fun of him and in fact the first time he asks for tea she says that tea is an old person drink and brings him a coffee anyway (later she relents and brings him a pot of tea every day following). But I love this because tea people don’t get enough representation. I don’t care about the entirety of British cinema. I’m talking about Americans who prefer tea, even when it is entirely the wrong thing to order. I needed this.

There is a hoot and holler quality to the audaciousness of letting McCall really linger in this town, in my opinion, but of course the real moments when my audience at the AMC Village started to say “Yeah!” out loud was when the Equalizing began.

McCall reaches his breaking point in a lovely little trattoria, where after weeks (?) of peaceful, small town life he is forced to reveal his true nature when a mafioso comes swaggering in threatening the other diners. McCall delivers a calm ultimatum (“whatever it is you do, do it somewhere else”) and the guy laughs it off because he thinks this is a Random Old Tourist. McCall grabs his arm and squeezes a pressure point until the mafioso practically pees his pants and leaves. Take that! Someone in my audience yelled “that’s right!” at the screen. From there, Denzel sets about killing off this entire mafia family, but only after his warnings aren’t heeded.

Denzel Washington trying to enjoy a nice meal in The Equalizer 3. — Meal, interrupted.

What I love about the action is that it’s basically frictionless.3 At no point are you in the least bit concerned that Robert McCall is going to die. He kills people with efficient, graceful ease (mostly with guns, once with a wine bottle) and nobody is ever positioned to be his match. Nobody equals the Equalizer. When he faces the Big Bad, the mafia boss who spends his time evicting people by throwing them out of windows, there’s really no struggle at all. Some may argue this is not dramatically sound. I would argue that sometimes I don’t want to be stressed out and it is really fun to watch 68 year old Denzel Washington murk a bunch of guys seamlessly.

This is the hoot and holler in its purest form—a movie whose sole purpose is to deliver a satisfying win. There’s no intended takeaway here except to walk out of the theater punching the air. When I emerged, I felt triumphant. This movie had delivered almost exactly what I had wanted. I had laughed and cried. I immediately texted my boyfriend that I was “astounded” and went to get myself a plate of $14 pasta and one of the worst glasses of red wine I have ever had in my life. Bellissima!

Personally important Los Angeles outdoor mall The Grove, which has a singing fountain.

Okay, it does a LITTLE bit of this: Dakota Fanning as a CIA agent, the addition of some totally unnecessary additional stakes to the mafia stuff with a plot involving “jihad drugs” (what is this? nobody knows) and domestic terrorism, but it so clearly does not matter.

The film Downtown Abbey: A New Era operates much the same way.