Director: Antoine Fuqua.
Starring: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz.
Running Time: 128 Minutes.
Synopsis: McCall is a former black ops commando who has faked his death to live a quiet life in Boston. When he comes out of his self-imposed retirement to rescue a young girl, Teri, he finds himself face to face with ultra-violent Russian gangsters. As he serves vengeance against those who brutalize the helpless, McCall’s desire for justice is reawakened. If someone has a problem, the odds are stacked against them, and they have nowhere else to turn, McCall will help. He is The Equalizer.
There are a few things that stick in ones mind as we look back at the great 1980s TV series that was THE EQUALIZER. A juddering, memorable theme tune, sweeping vistas of the New York skyline, scenes of reprobates lurking on the subway/ random lifts, and a silhouetted Edward Woodward stood, hands in trench coat pockets against the backdrop of beaming car headlights. Woodward played the role of Robert McCall for five years, and was nominated for multiple Emmys and Golden Globes for his performance as a ruthless vigilante who would help those in desperate need on the nasty streets of 80s NYC.
Fast forward 25 years and THE EQUALIZER is the latest in a long line of popular TV fodder of the past to be introduced to a modern audience. Here, McCall is played by the ever reliable Denzel Washington, who reunites with his TRAINING DAY director Antoine Fuqua; a filmmaker back in fashion following huge commercial success with last year’s DIE HARD wannabe OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN. Fuqua, along with 16 BLOCKS writer Robert Wenk, relocates the action 200 miles away from Manhattan to Boston, where our protagonist wiles away his days working in a large DIY store and his nights rather randomly reading the 100 greatest books ever written in a dingy 24/7 diner. There, he meets street worker Teri, played by Chloë Grace Moretz, a down on her luck escort who has gotten in deep with the Russian mafia, led by vodka-swigging pimp Slavi. When McCall doesn’t take too kindly to the way in which Slavi and his band of merry, tattooed thugs treat young Teri, he decides to take matters into his own hands and give them a bloody good hiding.
Washington fans will savour the big guy’s latest offering with the same amount of relish as his troubled bodyguard Treasy in Tony Scott’s fantastic MAN ON FIRE a few years back. Not only does THE EQUALIZER share some of the themes of that movie, but also the amount of violence contained within it. This is brutal, hard-R stuff, unrelenting from start to finish, pushing the boundaries of the source material to its absolute limits. Washington’s performance is, without doubt, his best in this kind of movie for absolutely ages, and his return to the action genre that he pretty much owned (or co-owned with Liam Neeson) towards the end of the last decade is more than welcomed.
Moretz is fine in her role as the troubled prostitute, but her screen time is restricted to what resembles little more than an extended cameo. In the form of the bad guy, you have Marton Csokas, last seen as Dr. Kafka in Marc Webb’s THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2, who is perfectly effective as the ruthless Teddy, fixer for the Russian mafia.
THE EQUALIZER was always going to run into the danger of not being able to fit the criteria of the TV show, and would struggle by just being able to focus on one storyline and one victim within the feature running time, though somehow it manages it, though it’s obvious that Sony have bigger plans for this potential franchise, and this movie sets us up for that perfectly.
A great start to the autumn season. An absolute action-packed, balls to the wall, bloody, blast. More please!
[usr=4] THE EQUALIZER is released in UK cinemas on Friday 26th September.
