
Two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington re-teams with “Training Day” director Antoine Fuqua to bring the 80s TV series “The Equalizer” to the big screen. It’s an action film with such over-the-top and unpredictable violence that it’s hard to imagine this version will ever make it onto broadcast TV.
Sony is clearly counting on “The Equalizer” becoming a big money franchise. When you’ve got a commanding lead who brings the credibility and gravitas to a role that could easily have landed in the wrong hands, and a director who’s not afraid to show a little…let me rephrase that…A LOT of blood, I can understand why audiences (though maybe not those over 65) will embrace this character and be happy to see him do his thing again and again. Hey, if Liam Neeson can rescue his abducted family members over and over and over, and do big box office in the process, Denzel can certainly continue to help those in need of his “services”.
Washington plays Robert McCall, a widower who lives in Boston and works at a Home Depot-like store. His days are fairly quiet and ordinary, and are topped-off with late night visits to the corner diner, where he reads the current entry on his “100 Greatest Books of All-Time” list. After learning that a young prostitute named Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz is excellent) is trying to turn her life around, but can’t escape the Russian mobsters who are controlling her, Robert (who just happens to be an ex-black-ops commando) decides to “help”.
He kills-off the first layer of bad guys (the “stopwatch” scene from the trailer) but unknowingly sets-off a firestorm. The narrative of “The Equalizer” is very episodic. It’s one twenty-minute story after another involving Robert and a supporting character, intertwined with the continuing main plot (Robert vs. evil, and I mean EVIL, Russian mafia leader Teddy, played nicely by Marton Csokas, who could also play Kevin Spacey in a biopic). This style is too basic and obvious, and I have specific problems with several decisions made by Fuqua and screenwriter Richard Wenk.
“The Equalizer” is wild, wacky, unintentionally funny, stagy and long. The plot, as it is for most vigilante/revenge films, doesn’t provide any surprises. Instead, those come from the graphic ways Robert goes about killing-off everyone in his way, highlighted by a climactic 20 minute sequence in the “Home Mart” store, which is so ridiculously violent you’ll be looking for Quentin Tarantino’s name in the credits.
Unfortunately, while the “The Equalizer” succeeds in the area of creative bloodshed, it simply isn’t very entertaining. It tries to shock more than achieve suspense the old fashioned way – through well-written scenes and dramatic situations. However, for Denzel fans, it’s a must-see. I can’t think of too many other veteran, A-list actors who could pull-off this role. And my guess is we’ll be seeing more of Robert McCall in a few years, and probably a few years after that. I only hope those scripts provide Washington, and the rest of us, with more of a challenge.
On The Official LCJ Report Card, “The Equalizer” gets a C+.