THE EQUALIZER

As seen in

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Let`s be honest, who wasn’t excited to see Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington back together again? Training Day was the movie that you always tell a friend to watch if you are talking about Denzel. So here comes the pair’s follow-up. And, like the new wave of TV-turned feature length movie (see: 21 Jump Street), here comes The Equalizer.

The film follows the life of Robert McCall (Washington). He leads a seemingly normal life - he gets up, he goes to work, and he goes home. Every evening, as apparently he has troubles sleeping, he makes his way to the same all-night diner. There he meets Helena (played by the increasingly talented Chloë Grace Moretz), a young street worker who is obviously unhappy with her life choices but knows she is stuck doing it. No pun intended. Repeated evenings go by where Robert enjoys tea and a good book, and Helena enjoys a slice of pie – throwing in the occasional conversation. Then, one night, McCall witnesses Helena being roughed up by her employer. This obviously unsettles McCall, but (much to his chagrin) he stays out of it. When he goes to the diner the next night, she is not there. He finds out she is in the hospital as she was assaulted bad. That’s when McCall finds out that, not only are her employers a sleazy group of Russians, but they are Russian mob.  It is now time for McCall to spring into action. What follows is a series of butt-kicking that only could be rivaled by Bond, Bourne, or…well…Liam Neeson.  Saving the day from those ranging from different factions of the mob to dirty cops, McCall will not stop until he feels his justice is served.  However, when head of the Russian mob sends his clean-up man (Maron Csokas) to take care of the problem that is Robert McCall, McCall may have found an adversary that will not stop until he is dead.

In case I didn’t make it obvious – there was no real back story, only hints. Characters were thrown on the screen with an assumption that if you watched a body count like that, you would not notice any real explanation.  It followed the formulaic Boston-movie-rule of “See how many F-bombs can you drop in one sentence” made popular by Scorcese. And what truly upset me was the gross underutilization of Chloë, as she is far too talented to be reduced to a maximum of 15 minutes of screen time in a two-hour flick. Another surprising talent glimpse was having Melissa Leo (The Fighter) and Bill Pullman in it without any real presence except to serve as figurative narrators to an unfinished story.  I had hoped Fuqua could deliver, but instead what he made was a movie so obviously based off a TV show, that if you removed all the filler, could have easily fit into a 21-minute television slot.