‘When you pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too...’
I never caught The Equalizer when it originally dropped back in 2014. With the release of the second sequel in 2023, it felt like now was the time to go back and discover this franchise for the first time. Antoine Fuqua reunited with his Training Day star Denzel Washington for a film that is derivative and unoriginal but still a lot of fun…
Robert McCall (Washington) leads a pretty normal life. He works in a DIY store. He eats in the same diner every night. He’s not looking for trouble. When Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), a fellow patron of McCall’s favourite diner, is badly beaten up, our imposing hero decides to investigate. This brings him in direct contact with a Russian mob boss (Marton Csokas) and a crooked cop (David Harbour).
What if Taken but with Denzel instead of Liam Neeson? That’s the pitch for this movie and it’s a solid one. While the plot is uninspired, Washington has enough star power to carry The Equalizer through to its bloody conclusion. And this is a violent movie – gleefully so. At well over two hours The Equalizer is a little too long, the third act a little too convoluted, but the heart-pounding action sequences come thick and fast and Fuqua never lets the proceedings go on too long without someone being punched.
While the supporting cast doesn’t bring much to the table, it scarcely matters. It’s a joy to see a genuine movie star shoot, stab and kick his way through a collection of interchangeable Russian mobsters. Turn off brain. Turn on punching. A success.