It doesn’t really matter whether or not you recall the old CBS TV show on which Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer is based, because there’s very little similarity outside of the title and a tough-as-nails hero who will bust heads standing up for the downtrodden ‘little guy.’ In truth, this latest entry in the Denzel Washington grizzled-warrior sweepstakes still feels like reheated leftovers, drawing less from the Ed Woodward-starring series and more from every recent action endeavor released in the last ten-to-fifteen years. In a surprisingly silly turn, the finale resembles a twisted, adult oriented version of Home Alone, as Washington faces off with an army of Russian mobsters in the Home Depot-style DIY store where he works.
Before Fuqua deluges the audience in the fury of Washington’s vengeance and scads of gratuitous, fetishistic death scenes, he spends a few moments introducing us to the central cardboard types that pass for characters. Robert McCall (Washington) is a low-key, Zen-style employee for the previously mentioned DIY store, who loves the job and has patience and time for his fellow employees. McCall approaches every facet of his life with a militaristic precision, down to timing the minutes he takes him to eat dinner.
All of this is obviously setting up an eventual reveal about McCall’s hoary past as a professional soldier of some sort or the other, but the script’s early going only has time for checking off clichés and moving on. McCall also makes late night visits to one of those lonely, atmospheric diners, the kind that seemingly exist only to house recovering former bad-asses and their defenseless young charges. One likes to imagine that Liam Neeson is one booth over, assuring grieving parents he’s got a particular set of skills, while Jason Statham sits at the counter seat, eyeing up some knucklehead.
McCall’s catalyst back to the path of brutality and broken bones (others, not his own) is doe-eyed prostitute Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), whose beating at the hands of her Russian pimp triggers the old man’s inner Denzel Washington. After a particularly convoluted combat sequence, wherein Washington takes on several armed and dangerous thugs as if he were playing Whack-A-Mole at the arcade, Fuqua launches into the second half of the story with renewed ferocity. Thanks to McCall’s act of vengeance on Teri’s behalf, the ire of the Russian mob, their hired enforcer Teddy (a skeevy but enjoyable Martin Csokas), and the weight of Boston’s corrupted police force come bearing down on the duo.
At the surface level, all of these developments and plot manipulations feel at home for the kind of film that The Equalizer clearly wants to be. The action scenes are plentiful and sometimes so ridiculously void of self-awareness that they become incidentally hilarious—including that aforementioned scene in the hardware store and a slo-mo explosion walk that may rank in the top five I’ve ever seen. Fuqua, however, has proven over the years that he excels at gritty, stone-faced explorations of macho swagger, and not so much with tongue-in-cheek action camp.
The likes of Olympus Has Fallen and King Arthur failed specifically because their harebrained adventure DNA couldn’t support Fuqua’s faux solemnity. Here he plows forward as if The Equalizer were revealing depths about McCall’s persona with each kill, but the script’s flimsy, evaporating nature makes us hardly care about anything but the next grisly act of comeuppance. The action scenes lack any sense of surprise or visually compelling texture, mostly because they continue to regurgitate motifs we’ve seen before and have since tired of; particularly irritating are attempts, ala Guy Ritchie, to show Denzel preemptively anticipating his attackers’ movements.
Denzel Washington has done this type of role so often that he could probably literally perform it in his sleep, and as a side effect he’s also left his own indelible mark on this brand of macho, haggard warrior. McCall has been written so that he possesses the spirit of similar Denzel characters, like Man on Fire’s Creasy, but he lacks any specific motivations or revelations that might give him individuality. He’s got a soft, weary form of chemistry with Moretz, but her role is so woefully underwritten that it rarely affords the kind of substance the movie is looking for. Moretz, a fine young actress, gives a stilted and rather awkward performance, but she seems hardly to blame. Instead of a strong character, one whose weaknesses and dreams we truly understand, the script gives her a bland cipher whose misogynistic purpose is simply to be beaten so that McCall’s bloodlust can be triggered. Csokas is entertaining as the crazy Russian killer, but he’s also awkwardly shoe-horned into the proceedings. Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo are completely wasted as two of McCall’s associates from his old life.
There’s nothing particularly terrible or poorly constructed about The Equalizer, but its presence in our current cultural landscape renders it innocuous. We’ve seen this type of violent, showy, brooding pap so often and with so little introspection that it has ceased to be edgy or invigorating. At this point, novel would be finding a way to inspire the tough guy to action with nary a woman demeaned or hooker bashed — maybe one day.
The Equalizer opens in wide release on Friday, September 26th.