The Equalizer | Denzel Washington's righteous righter of wrongs opens a giant can of whup-ass

The Equalizer - Denzel Washington as Robert McCall
(Image credit: Scott Garfield)
(Image credit: Scott Garfield)

An overlong, ultra-violent and utterly humourless update of the 1980s TV series starring Edward Woodward, The Equalizer finds Denzel Washington’s righteous righter of wrongs cracking open a giant can of whup-ass on a bunch of bad’uns.

To begin with, though, his unassuming loner, Robert McCall, more closely resembles an OCD saddo than an awesome warrior. He lives alone in a spookily neat flat, works at a humble job in a Boston home-depot store and eats in his local diner, where he reads his way through his late wife’s book list of 100 classics and offers paternal advice to Chloë Grace Moretz’s troubled prostitute, Teri.

The Equalizer - Denzel Washington, Chloe Grace Moretz

Yet his constant wristwatch checking and all those other odd tics aren’t signs of compulsive disorder but clues that he is actually a former black ops agent living in self-imposed retirement. And when Teri ends up in hospital following a savage beating by her Russian pimp and his thugs, he brushes off his commando skills to mete out retribution.

Denzel’s noble vigilante couldn’t be a more absurd fantasy figure if he were clad in a comic-book superhero’s cape and tights. He is preternaturally cool, uses household objects and power tools - but no firearms - to dispatch his foes, and walks away from explosions without flinching.

The Equalizer - Denzel Washington walks away from explosions without flinching

The film briefly suggests that there may be an affinity between him and his chief adversary, Marton Csokas’s heartless Russian enforcer, Teddy, but we’re never meant to entertain the idea that the violence he inflicts so sadistically is anything but just.

When he watches his latest victim’s final blood-choked gurgles and gasps, having perhaps stabbed this nameless goon in the throat with a corkscrew, we’re supposed to admire his unblinking resolve.

He’s the perfect embodiment of American exceptionalism, the notion that 'we can go around wreaking carnage, leaving havoc in our wake because, hey, we’re the good guys'.

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Certificate 15. Runtime 132 mins. Director Antoine Fuqua.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UK0quOIJus

 

Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.