Equalizer, The

Synopsis: Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is a middle-aged man working at a Bunnings-style hardware warehouse store. He’s an insomniac and reads books at a diner where he befriends Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), a hooker under the thumb of the local Russian mafia. When they beat her, Robert decides to help. Turns out he was something altogether more scary in a former life and those skills are turned on the mafia with lethal effect.

A few minutes into The Equalizer, I groaned. It’s another bloody origin story. He’s not some man of mystery who turns up when you respond to the ad: “Odds against you? Need help? Call The Equalizer.” He’s just some dull guy coaching the fat guy at work into losing weight so he can qualify to become a security guard and reading books whose titles are all chosen to slap you in the face with their sub-textual meaning. It takes ages for the plot proper to kick in and for McCall to go from being the dull guy to the angel of vengeance. And that first bit really is a grind, because so much of it is disposable. Teri as a character is there simply to establish that McCall is a nice guy who’ll murder five men in under 30 seconds if he feels it’s justified. She vanishes for the rest of the film even though she seems like an obvious plot device for the film to circle back to once the Russian mafia send Teddy (Marton Csokas), an enforcer just as ruthless as McCall, to hunt him down.

But once the film stops wasting time with plot devices that only turn into holes that will never be filled, The Equalizer, which is based on the 1980s British TV series of the same name, becomes a serviceable revenge thriller. There’s some snappy action, including the aforementioned grisly murdering of the five mafia men, and a cat and mouse game of kill-or-be-killed in the hardware warehouse that makes you wonder what might have happened if MacGyver ever had a psychotic episode. It’s diverting to watch a bunch of very bad men meet very bad ends as the good guy keeps one step ahead. It may not be that way in the real world, but a bit of cathartic escapism never hurts.

So really, there’s two ways to take this film. The first way, you can methodically tear it apart with the cold calculation that McCall employs against his enemies. It’s an exercise not without its pleasures but feeling superior to a popcorn fluff piece like this is ultimately an empty enterprise. So there’s the second approach. Time to kill? Need help? Watch The Equalizer.

FYI: There were 2018 and 2023 sequels,The Equalizer 2 and The Equalizer 3, both directed by Fuqua and starring Washington, that, as their titles indicate, provided more of the same although the latter benefited from setting proceedings on the gorgeous Amalfi coast of Southern Italy.

 

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