Movie Review: The Equalizer
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
The Equalizer was an espionage television series that aired for four seasons on CBS from fall 1985 to spring 1989. It starred the late English actor Edward Woodward as Robert McCall, a middle-aged retired intelligence officer with a mysterious past who used his skills to help people who were in trouble. The show took elements from popular spy films and private investigator shows and mixed them with gritty realism and violence. Now there’s a new feature film version of The Equalizer, starring Denzel Washington as McCall and helmed by Antoine Fuqua, who directed Washington to his Best Actor Oscar for Training Day (2001). But despite the talent involved, The Equalizer ultimately never rises above being a solid but standard action thriller.
Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is a man who believes he has put his violent past as a government operative behind him and dedicated himself to beginning a new, quiet life. But when McCall meets Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz), a young girl working as a prostitute for brutal Russian gangsters, he can’t stand idly by – he has to help her. Armed with skills that allow him to exact vengeance against anyone who would brutalize the helpless, McCall comes out of his self-imposed retirement and finds his desire for justice reawakened. If someone has a problem, if the odds are stacked against them, if they have nowhere else to turn, they call the Equalizer.
In terms of the cast, the movie really belongs to Denzel Washington as Robert McCall. Washington is always enjoyable to watch onscreen, and it’s a lot of fun to see him kick ass. There are hints that McCall might have some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which would be an interesting thing to see in an action hero; but this element is largely dropped once the plot gets moving and doesn’t have any kind of payoff. Ultimately, this is the kind of role we’ve seen Washington play before in multiple better films. Marton Csokas, probably best known as Lord Celeborn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, plays Teddy, the Russian mob enforcer sent to Boston who ends up becoming the film’s main villain. Csokas works as a physically intimidating heavy, but there’s not much to the character apart from being brutal and ruthless. Chloë Grace Moretz is good in her role as the teenage prostitute Teri, and her scenes with Washington give the film most of what heart it does have. Unfortunately, her character ends up sidelined for most of the film, which feels like a waste of Moretz’ talents. And Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo show up briefly as Brian and Susan Plummer, friends of McCall’s from his old job, which was a pleasant surprise.
The action in the film is pretty good, as you would expect from director Fuqua, but it’s also really not breaking new ground. The fistfights and exchanges of gunfire are all staged and shot well, but they’re really not different from scenes we’ve seen in other movies. The best action sequence is the film’s final battle, where McCall takes on Teddy and his thugs inside Home Mart – the Home Depot-like hardware store where McCall works. The scene is pretty cool, and features some creatively improvised weapons. But at the same time, some moments in it end up reminding the viewer of Home Alone (1990), which tends to take one out of the film at a critical point in the narrative.
But the thing that really stood out to me is that the film has pretty much nothing to do with the TV show. Other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment near the end of the film, Robert McCall is never called “The Equalizer,” and there’s never a reference to “equalizing” of any kind. Besides that one moment, you could change the film’s title and the name of Washington’s character – and nothing else – and nobody would think the film had any connection with The Equalizer. The film, as it stands, feels more like an R-rated feature-length episode of Burn Notice, or perhaps a spiritual sequel to Washington’s own Man on Fire (2004).
In the end, The Equalizer is a movie that is not bad, it’s just completely unremarkable. The film is entertaining enough that you don’t feel you wasted your time, but it still can’t escape the feeling that we’ve seen all of this before. If you’re a fan of The Equalizer TV show, you’d probably be better off re-watching it on DVD. If you want to watch Denzel Washington kick ass, you should check out Training Day or Man on Fire instead. The Equalizer is a movie to watch on cable TV or via Netflix, not one you should shell out money to see at the theater.
Timothy Monforton
