Saw both The Equalizer and Gone Girl seriatim – the latter a very tough ticket to get.  Even for reviewers.  Both are long – over two and a half hours each.

I prefer The Equalizer, which stars a magnificent, cool, heroically controlled Denzel Washington confronting various bad guys in some unnamed American city.  Denzel has a day job in a Home Depot-like place, working competently on supplies, inventorying or managing industrial heavy goods.  And the choice of a vast warehouse-like Home depot venue for much of the exciting action here is brilliant. We love the shelving packed with lumber, drills, saws, mowers, fabulous man-stuff that builds the home and the city.  He goes to work on a subway with handholds, so it's not NYC.  He eats humble sandwiches and discourages bad habits in others, but he doesn't make a fetish of it.  When his friends around the shop  tease him about what his past is, he teases back.  We don't get much of a hint  until very late in the story as to where this strong, taciturn, good man gets his prowess.

Give this slow, methodical, kindly man – he is on his own time, training an adipose colleague to eat less and healthily, and to work out so he can make security guard – a "situation," something that smells of brutality or unwonted savagery against a gorgeous local Russian prostitute, say – and he quietly prepares, while not letting anything out to those around.  Silken in his approach, not taking offense when others deride him and call him outrageous epithets, he acts with serpentine speed.  Speed and deadly accuracy.

It's hard not to cheer internally as this big guy with little fuss gets the bad people.  Finally: A hero who does his job without fanfare, but with maximal efficacy.  He speaks slowly, he walks soberly, he acts methodically.  He is a hero for our time, a real Superman, the kind of man everyone yearns to have when things go downhill via others' misdeeds.  It is exhilarating to go through days and nights with this bulwark of justice as he unflinchingly does what needs to be done, to rectify these ugly wrongs he sees.

The film is almost symphonic as it switches to just background music, or slo-mo close-ups of dangerous elements within the sphere of Denzel's keen-eyed macroscopic view.  Many of the scenes are beautifully shot and lit – highly stylized slanting rain, dimly shadowy streets against bright backlit scenic glare, mousing around the inky construction store – aisle after aisle of dangerous-looking potential weaponry...

Finally, a movie where the good guys take masculine control.  And persevere.  Refreshing as all get-out.

Best Denzel in ages – and he's always good.

Gone Girl is long and twisty, and it takes a while to unreel what's going on.  Ben Affleck's character's wife, played by Rosamund Pike – last seen in Jack Reacher, with Tom Cruise – mysteriously disappears one morning.  Affleck's character is soon accused of her murder, and the police don't buy his innocent protestations of love for his five-year "idyllic" marriage.  They soon get fortification in their suspicions.  The movie switches from Affleck's POV to his wife's, and it ensnares your interest as you puzzle out who is telling the truth, who not.  The media, reality TV, and obnoxious interviewers and journos all get their dose of mincing, which cannot even be said to be altogether satirical, since the media do behave like hyenas in many of the dopey legal cases that litter our news for too long, engaging far too many millions in the befuddling nightmares and witchiness of such apparently lower-order beings.

Although it has its moments and is engrossing, it takes some suspension of disbelief to go along with some of the bloodier and unlikely aspects of this "amazing" character (particularly the part played by Neil Patrick Harris), and the denouement is somewhat unsatisfying.