Antoine Fuqua
343 connections found
Filmography
The Equalizer 2014 
Training Day 2001 
Infinite 2021 
Southpaw 2015 
Brooklyn's Finest 2010 
Olympus Has Fallen 2013 
The Magnificent Seven 2016 
Shooter 2007 
The Replacement Killers 1998 
Tears of the Sun 2003 
King Arthur 2004 
Bait 2000 
The Equalizer 2 2018 
Emancipation 2022 
The Equalizer 3 2023 
Lightning in a Bottle 2004 
The Guilty 2021 
Michael 2026 View:
Connections, in both directions
It has the over-the-top brutality of “Raging Bull,” without matching Martin Scorsese’s artistry.
While lacking the grace and ethereal beauty of the matches in “Raging Bull,” “Southpaw” comes off pretty much as the real thing.
Although there are plenty of echoes of past boxing films, from the grit of Raging Bull to the heart of The Champ (both versions) as well as the Rocky pics , Champion, Somebody Up There Likes Me and others, this movie has a beating heart of its own.
Think Rocky rather than Raging Bull, and don’t spend time wondering how soon screenwriters Kurt Sutter (TV’s Sons of Anarchy) and Richard Wenk (The Mechanic) will reference The Great White Hope.
Of course, how that idea gets executed is what makes the difference between Raging Bull and Grudge Match .
Put more simply, there’s a lot of punching in “Southpaw,” which combines the training narrative from “Rocky,” the visceral ringside energy of “Raging Bull” and the rank melodrama of “Million Dollar Baby” to make something, if not new, then at least stylish in its derivativeness.
Gyllenhaal, in a role originally written for Eminem (who eventually limited his contribution to a speed rap training anthem that’s no match for the Rocky theme), is so committed and compelling he overcomes the clichés, even when director Antoine Fuqua surrenders to them.
Sylvester Stallone made the boxing term southpaw part of the Everyday lexicon in "Rocky" and this film's finale borrows liberally from that one, one fighter's humble entrance contrasted with Vegas flash, Leila waiting in the dressing room just like Adrienne.
It may be unfair, but it's inevitable that the modern boxing movie will ultimately be compared to John Avildsen and Sylvester Stallone's scrappy but brilliant Rocky.
Although there are plenty of echoes of past boxing films, from the grit of Raging Bull to the heart of The Champ (both versions) as well as the Rocky pics , Champion, Somebody Up There Likes Me and others, this movie has a beating heart of its own.
Boxing films already possess a stigma thanks to the Rocky franchise (save the first ending against expectations in a way that made it near impossible to be a copycat by shunning the “happily ever after”).
The obvious reference point here is Die Hard , with Gerard Butler stepping awkwardly into Bruce Willis' shoes as Mike Banning, the man trying to single-handedly thwart a hostage situation from the inside.
And not since the original Die Hard (1988) have we seen a film that plays so much like, well, the original Die Hard, with so many plot points lifted and transcribed into the new setting that one could play a potentially lethal drinking game putting away shots every time you spot one (“I spy Robert Forster in the Paul Gleason role!,” “I spy the scene where overconfident military commandos try and fail to take back the building with badly misguided force!”).
Olympus Has Fallen follows the Die Hard formula right down to the letter, but with little of the style of that 1988 Bruce Willis classic.
There's irony to be found in the recognition that the best Die Hard to be released in 2013 isn't the franchise's official entry, A Good Day to Die Hard , but the White House-based copycat, Olympus Has Fallen.
There are some slick action sequences that bolster this flag-waving crowd-pleaser from director Antoine Fuqua ( Training Day ), yet the cookie-cutter script seems more content to rip-off ideas from Die Hard and other superior thrillers.
The movie is “Die Hard” in the White House, a combination of the violent and the cheesy which may nevertheless push a few buttons.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This Les Mis stirs the civil-unrest themes of Hugo’s original story into a Training Day -type scenario — and it works remarkably well.
Truth be told, Ly’s tale of poverty, race and police abuse of power feels more akin to Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day than anything else.
A cross between The Wire, Do the Right Thing and Training Day, Les Misérables is brilliantly paced, unbearably tense and a reminder that there are so many great actors who go under the radar.
Even if the framing device around which much of the plot depends upon recalls more standard action-thriller fair like Training Day (or even Dennis Hopper’s 1988 drama Colors of all things), the initial immersion into the daily ins and outs in Montfermeil is superb.
The touchstones for Les Misérables besides Victor Hugo‘s classic, are La Haine , Do the Right Thing , and Training Day .
It is a potboiler thriller that has ingredients of the likes of Training Day as it goes about lifting the lid on the live wire tension that exists between the police and organised crime in the Parisian suburbs.
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Directed by John Sturges
influenced The Magnificent Seven (2016), King Arthur (2004)
Plot Music
Comparison, too, can be made to both “Seven Samurai” and “The Magnificent Seven” as each of Arthur’s followers has some special skill that they bring to the equation and to the fight.
The Magnificent Seven is a Kurosawa knockoff, but an entertaining and memorable one.
It's sporadically rousing and the script (by David Franzoni, who wrote "Gladiator") is occasionally clever, but it's not well directed, the casting creates few sparks and it comes off as an uninspired remake of "The Magnificent Seven" in medieval dress.
Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter Review by Mark Dujsik | September 22, 2016 The distinct rhythm of Elmer Bernstein's timeless theme to 1960's The Magnificent Seven can be heard amidst the score of this new iteration of the story.
Overall, “The Magnificent Seven” is a worthy tribute to the original 1960 classic, and it’s a great ride for fans of action or westerns.
That's because the plot of The Magnificent Seven already powered a previous Western starring Yul Brenner, Eli Wallach and Steve McQueen that hit in 1960, and that movie additionally was lifted from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai released in 1954.
Outside the Wire (2021)
Directed by Mikael Håfström
influenced by Training Day (2001)
Themes Characters Plot Dialogue
As Harp begins to understand that there is an extra-jurisdictional way that Leo is able to operate, one is reminded of the back-and-forth between Ethan Hawke and Denzel Washington in Training Day – though this film goes in much wilder directions.
Everything about him is a secret, and as the men head off on a vaccine-delivery mission that is really cover for a meeting with a spy, Leo's impatience with his hesitant underling may recall the dynamic between Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke in Training Day .
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: RoboCop , Terminator 2 , Bright , Extraction , Training Day , Real Steel , the Mission: Impossible movie(s) with scenes in Eastern Europe and/or characters running on rooftops, and Chappie , can’t forget Chappie .
What this amounts to, really, is a few longwinded and artlessly-written conversations in the car between firefights – those are reminiscent of Training Day , even if the subject is plucked straight from Eye in the Sky .
He gets along well with Idris, in a similar way as Denzel Washington did Ethan Hawke in Training Day.
Have you ever watched “Training Day” and wondered how cool it would be if, 15 minutes into the movie, Denzel Washington took off his shirt to reveal that he was actually a semi-translucent android super-soldier with the strength of a Terminator and the emotional range of a B-team Avenger?
The one mediating figure between these starkly opposed camps is, amusingly enough, an ex-National Guard, Dale (Steve Mokate), who claims to have worked as a trainer on the 2003 Bruce Willis war movie Tears of the Sun !
Pop culture references from Ava Duvernay to Tears of the Sun (2003) earn laughs as do exchanges about guns and problematic representation.
The script—adapted by Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse from the nearly century-old short story "The Most Dangerous Game"—is witty and often hilarious, including some outstanding jokes about the action movie Tears of the Sun.
Navy veterans fantasize about their Hannity tell-all interviews while brash billionaire sociopaths are trained by military consultants from Tears Of The Sun .
A few cultural references, to the Bruce Willis movie Tears of the Sun and to Ava DuVernay’s Twitter presence, land because at least they sound specific, instead of like weak imitations of Very Online discourse.
The Matrix (1999)
Directed by Lana Wachowski
influenced Infinite (2021), The Equalizer (2014)
Plot Themes
Sure, it plays with better ideas yanked from various sci-fi movies, books, and TV series, including The Matrix , Altered Carbon , The Fifth Element , and Total Recall .
I’m not in any way suggesting that screenplay writer Ian Shorr ( Office Uprising ) and screen story writer Todd Stein (2:22) absconded with someone else’s ideas, it’s that you can see the influences from stories like W anted (2008), The Matrix (1999), Total Recall (1990), and the John Wick universe in a variety of ways.
The Mark Wahlberg–starrer reveals just how stuck Hollywood sci-fi is in 1999, when The Matrix cemented ideas of digital consciousness in the Western mainstream (with a bent of pan-Asian spirituality).
The bare bones of the plot definitely possess the potential to deliver a strikingly original globetrotting epic, but the final product feels like an undercooked and underwritten slog that echoes superior films like Inception , The Matrix , Netflix’s The Old Guard and even the Fast & Furious franchise, and Infinite doesn’t bring anything to the table that either action or sci-fi fans haven’t seen done before, and much better.
Movies about “the one” — a relative nobody who realizes they’re actually the only person capable of stopping a threat, defeating a villain, or saving the world — had a good run from The Matrix (1999) through numerous YA adventures in the two decades since.
The Matrix is the biggest influence here – the story unfolds in a manner that follows that film almost beat for beat.
With all eyes and ears on a fluctuating sense of “superhero fatigue” amongst moviegoers, musical biopics quietly became just as oversaturated after Bohemian Rhapsody’s baffling Oscar sweep.
More often than not, we’re bombarded with mediocrity, such as Bohemian Rhapsody, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.
Other elements of this soft-focus drama are terrible reminders of other bad musical biopics, namely “Bohemian Rhapsody” — which shares in common with this movie the same atrocious cameo actor and a nagging sense that part of the story isn’t being told for the sake of maintaining a deceased star’s still lucrative legacy.
The modern musical biopic is less biography and more hagiography, usually with a great soundtrack. Bohemian Rhapsody, Elvis, and Walk the Line have no interest in telling the real story of the people who made the songs we love.
…culminating with the near-billion dollar success of Bohemian Rhapsody…
This is a film that can be placed next to dull, plodding, beat-hitting films like the embarrassing "Bohemian Rhapsody."
Like “Training Day” before it, “Triple 9” is eminently watchable, with tension throughout, and violence and treachery omnipresent.
Indeed, were it not for the film being set in Atlanta rather than Los Angeles (something which screams "tax breaks!" rather than a storytelling choice, unfortunately), you could squint and think the movie from the same guy who brought us “Training Day,” “Street Kings” and “End Of Watch.”
David: The last really good movie I saw about rogue cops was "Training Day" (2001) with Denzel Washington.
Opening with a messy heist reminiscent of Heat (1995), then crossing into the morally murky jurisdiction of Training Day (2001), this Atlanta-set thriller comes from the helm of John Hillcoat, a director with a long rap sheet of films dealing in the criminal mindset (Ghosts… of the Civil Dead, 1988; The Proposition, 2005; Lawless, 2012).
A former Black List entry written by Matt Cook, the script is not shy about its influences, recalling half a dozen cop dramas from the past few decades, most prominently Heat and Training Day .
Within “Triple 9,” there’s a subplot reminiscent of “Training Day,” as Marcus takes on a new partner, Chris (Casey Affleck), teaching him that the rules of the streets are far from police protocol.
Or you will find Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis sugarcoating the King’s abusive marriage to a much-younger Priscilla Presley.
There’s almost a reluctance towards visual creativity, falling to the wayside compared to maximalist efforts like Baz Luhrmann’s glitzy Elvis.
While most musical biopics adhere to clichés and rigid creative parameters, the most effective examples, like “Rocketman” and “Straight Outta Compton,” and even to a lesser degree “Elvis,” succeed because they embrace artistic license and point of view or at least attempt to reframe their subjects.
The best musician biopics—movies like Rocketman, Elvis, and Better Man—never forget their subjects are mortal.
The modern musical biopic is less biography and more hagiography, usually with a great soundtrack. Bohemian Rhapsody, Elvis, and Walk the Line have no interest in telling the real story of the people who made the songs we love.
…as, say, Baz Luhrmann did for Elvis…
“Ride Along” quotes directly from such genre touchstones as “Training Day” and “Lethal Weapon” while indirectly calling to mind the likes of “Bad Boys,” “Midnight Run” and this past summer’s “The Heat” — all of which offered more dimensional characters and more inspired ways of navigating this well-trodden ground.
(The movie at least has the decency to acknowledge that its premise will remind you of the far superior “Training Day.”)
In fact, the movie makes repeated reference to “Training Day.”
In point of fact, "Ride Along" points out several times that what it is is a comedically rebooted " Training Day ," this time with glowering but teddy-bearish Ice Cube in the Denzel role and Hart…well, you can't say he's in the Ethan Hawke role.
Though it starts off more like a comedic variation on Training Day, Ride Along also bears more than a passing resemblance to last summer’s odd couple cop comedy The Heat, in which by-the-book Fed Sandra Bullock and unhinged Boston cop Melissa McCarthy bickered and took down bad guys while becoming best friends.
Think a low-rent "Training Day" but played for laughs.
Air Force One (1997)
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
influenced Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
Plot Themes Characters
In addition to “Zero Dark Thirty,” you can compare “Olympus Has Fallen” to “Air Force One,” though on a much grander scale.
“Olympus Has Fallen” has a plot largely lifted from “Air Force One” (minus the plane), while also mixing in bits of “Independence Day” (minus the aliens) and “In the Line of Fire,” with a subplot about a Secret Service agent haunted by a past mistake and determined to successfully protect the president this time.
Unlike the similarly themed "Air Force One," Eckhart's President character isn't given much of a chance to do anything, while Morgan Freeman gets to be temporary Commander-in-Chief when things go amiss (and he's once again tasked with the pending end of the world, although this time it could be via nukes rather than a big interstellar rock headed this way).
As former special ops veteran Mike Banning, Butler makes his entrance as the tall, studly leader of the tall, studly Secret Service agents assigned to protect U.S. President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart in Harrison Ford’s “Air Force One” mode), first lady Margaret (Ashley Judd) and the first son Connor (Finley Jacobsen), a middle-school-aged kid who obviously hero-worships Mike.
In Air Force One, Harrison Ford made a powerfully convincing U.S. president; Aaron Eckhart, not so much.
Imagine grounding "Air Force One" and scaling it back to The White House, giving it the story of "Die Hard" with the laughable characters and ridiculous screenplay of the "Red Dawn" remake and sprinkling it with bits of "Law Abiding Citizen" and you get "Olympus Has Fallen."
Antoine Fuqua can be accused of derivative filmmaking with his adventure tome that gives more than a passing nod to such films a Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart” and Kenneth Branagh’s “Henry V.” The blue-stained skin of the Woad warriors and Arthur’s St. Crispin’s Day-style speech are lifted from those previous epic stories, although, historically, Fuqua and company may be more accurate in their depictions of the time.
JILL: It's the Henry V speech.
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
influenced The Magnificent Seven (2016), King Arthur (2004)
Plot Themes Visuals
Still, don’t be misled by the chain mail and pre-medieval diction: King Arthur is fundamentally a remake of The Wild Bunch, with a goofy feminist bonus.
Meanwhile, Fuqua pays visual tribute to classic Westerns such as The Searchers and The Wild Bunch, but renders the callbacks meaningless by providing no context for them.
Duly recruited by the newly widowed Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett, all grim determination and cleavage), the avenging septet arrives, trains the locals and gets ready for a showdown, which borrows a few moves from another classic western, The Wild Bunch, along the way.
Later, they evolved into the Clint Eastwood Man with No Name films and more violent affairs like Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch.
In spirit, the truest remake of Kurosawa’s film was not Hollywood’s cornball “oater” version of The Magnificent Seven but Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969), which confronted America’s new, post-assassinations, Vietnam-conscious era of violence.
The improv mayhem of Saving Private Ryan ’s final battle is a clear touchpoint, as is The Wild Bunch ’s famous climax, but with a 12A rating in mind, it’s an oddly bloodless swirl of bullets even as the bodies pile up.
Both screenwriters claim their motivation for Tears of the Sun came from Robert Wises The Sand Pebbles, starring Steve McQueen.
Directed by the ill-advisedly named Antoine Fuqua as a follow up to his popular and award winning Training Day, and derived from a screenplay credited to Alex Lasker and Patrick Cirillo (who apparently found inspiration in the Steve McQueen film The Sand Pebbles), Tears has none of the tension and hopeless-seemingly situations found in that earlier film's one great scene with Cliff Curtis as a mind-fudging gangsta.
To get an idea of just what you're in for with Tears of the Sun, imagine a pinch of Seven Samurai, a few tablespoons full of Saving Private Ryan and a heaping pile of The Sand Pebbles.
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Directed by Mel Brooks
influenced The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Characters Dialogue Plot
(Harvey Korman was much funnier in the same role in Blazing Saddles.)
Early on, when he raises eyebrows by presenting himself in an all-white saloon as a “duly sworn warrant officer,” it’s hard not to hear echoes of Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles and Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours.
It’s Cleavon Little’s mosey into Rock Ridge in Blazing Saddles, only told with a straight face and with some horrendously clichéd saloon dialogue.
Having the most fun is Vincent D’Onofrio, whose savage yet rolly-polly tracker offers the exact midway point between Blazing Saddles ’ Mongo and the bear from The Revenant .
Aside from the original M7, there are shout-outs to Shane, Hang 'Em High, The Wild Bunch and, most curiously, Blazing Saddles.
Even the basic premise behind “The Magnificent Seven” of a town led by heroes defending itself from a ruthless villain has been used so much it has been parodied on multiple occasions (think “Blazing Saddles” and “The Three Amigos”).
We’ve seen moldbreakers in recent years like Rocketman, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, and Better Man, though maybe that’s because the people who made those films are either genuinely creative or have seen Walk Hard.
While most musical biopics adhere to clichés and rigid creative parameters, the most effective examples, like “Rocketman” and “Straight Outta Compton,” and even to a lesser degree “Elvis,” succeed because they embrace artistic license and point of view or at least attempt to reframe their subjects.
You’ll get your occasional Better Man, Rocketman, and tick, tick… BOOM!: What makes these projects stand out amongst the rest is their ability and willingness to portray the artist in question from a vulnerable lens.
The best musician biopics—movies like Rocketman, Elvis, and Better Man—never forget their subjects are mortal.
…it still fails to creatively play with an overdone genre to the levels of surprisingly subversive and emotionally resonant biopics like the Elton John musical Rocketman…
Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter, Jeremy Allen White in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Taron Egerton in Rocketman all did their own singing, even with the risk of not measuring up to the icons they played who were all still alive when their films came out.
Taxi Driver (1976)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced The Equalizer (2014), Southpaw (2015)
Visuals Characters Plot
His well-controlled isolation ends when he takes a paternal interest in a teenaged prostitute named Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz, referencing Jodie Foster’s wardrobe in Taxi Driver).
These scenes also seem meant to evoke the paintings of Edward Hopper and the interplay between Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster in Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader’s Taxi Driver.
He befriends fellow diner regular Teri, a teen prostitute played by Chloe Grace Moretz, bringing to mind Jodie Foster in “Taxi Driver.”
That said, the particulars of their relationship (she’s an underage prostitute, he’s a non-client who befriends and hopes to save her) suggest that Wenk and director Antoine Fuqua fancied this some kind of a junior Taxi Driver, but, y’know, if Travis Bickle were just a chill, wise man of action.
The Equalizer brazenly plays the Taxi Driver angle, with Moretz updating Jodie Foster's underage prostitute in need of rescue.
The material shows its age when McCall goes all Taxi Driver to save a teen hooker (a scrappy Chloë Grace Moretz) from her pimps.
Think of "The Parallax View," "Three Days of the Condor," "JFK," "The Day of the Jackal," "North By Northwest," and "The Fugitive"; this film shamelessly borrows from the best, and while it isn't as good as any of these I mentioned, it does move along at a commendable pace and with at least a modicum of excitement, thanks to its director, Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day," "Tears of the Sun"), and its star.
The sense of free-floating menace (even a billowing American flag seems faintly ominous) and the framing of a good guy by dark political forces seem derived from the 1974 assassination classic, "The Parallax View."
Despite its obvious aspirations to be the kind of paranoid political thriller that "The Parallax View" and "Three Days of the Condor" were in the mid-'70s, "Shooter" is at its best - which is very good indeed - when it's a rootin' tootin' shootin' party.
Adapting Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter’s novel “Point of Impact,” the first entry in a trilogy featuring military sniper Bob Lee Swagger, scenarist Jonathan Lemkin stirs in recognizable ingredients from “The Parallax View,” “The Day of the Jackal,” “Seven Days in May” and “Three Days of the Condor,” feeding on and encouraging suspicion of nefarious deeds and dastardly motives among men in high places.
The screenwriter, Jonathan Lemkin, has acknowledged a debt not only to Hunter but to “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Parallax View,” seventies thrillers that drew on fears of shadowy government conspiracies.