The Equalizer (2014)
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
McCall believes he has put his mysterious past behind him and dedicated himself to beginning a new, quiet life. But when he meets Teri, a young girl under the control of ultra-violent Russian gangsters, he can’t stand idly by – he has to help her. Armed with hidden skills that allow him to serve vengeance against anyone who would brutalize the helpless, McCall comes out of his self-imposed retirement and finds his desire for justice reawakened. If someone has a problem, if the odds are stacked against them, if they have nowhere else to turn, McCall will help. He is The Equalizer.
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His well-controlled isolation ends when he takes a paternal interest in a teenaged prostitute named Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz, referencing Jodie Foster’s wardrobe in Taxi Driver).
These scenes also seem meant to evoke the paintings of Edward Hopper and the interplay between Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster in Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader’s Taxi Driver.
He befriends fellow diner regular Teri, a teen prostitute played by Chloe Grace Moretz, bringing to mind Jodie Foster in “Taxi Driver.”
That said, the particulars of their relationship (she’s an underage prostitute, he’s a non-client who befriends and hopes to save her) suggest that Wenk and director Antoine Fuqua fancied this some kind of a junior Taxi Driver, but, y’know, if Travis Bickle were just a chill, wise man of action.
The Equalizer brazenly plays the Taxi Driver angle, with Moretz updating Jodie Foster's underage prostitute in need of rescue.
The material shows its age when McCall goes all Taxi Driver to save a teen hooker (a scrappy Chloë Grace Moretz) from her pimps.
With reminders of many another lone seeker of justice making things noisy and violent in movies, (the overworked Charles Bronson in his "Death Wish" series, say) "The Equalizer" comes with it's own wrinkles in the time-honored genre -- not the least of which is actor Denzel Washington's cool presence as the man at the center.
But it’s possible “The Equalizer” owes its greatest debt to “Death Wish,” the controversial 1974 Charles Bronson celebration of vigilantism that was far more relevant then than “The Equalizer” is today, though the new movie is far more violent than all those other projects put together.
When we first meet him he’s reading “The Old Man and the Sea,” and by the end of the film he’s gone through “Don Quixote” to “Invisible Man,” and I suppose those function as narrative cues.
McCall’s in the middle of “The Old Man and the Sea” when we first see him, but if you think the only literary pummeling The Equalizer has to offer is purely metaphorical, just you wait.
Later, we see Robert standing on the beach, overlooking the sea; it's literally The Old Man and the Sea, just like that book he was reading earlier.
Like a stoic uncle to little Macaulay Culkin in those eerily sadistic "Home Alone" movies, McCall uses blow torches, hedge clippers, etc., to grind through his opponents.
McCall is soon drawn into an ever-escalating war that culminates in a final act that plays out like a particularly gruesome take on “Home Alone.”
With a climax that takes place in, of all places, a home improvement store, in a sick version of Home Alone complete with polite executions, a murder-by-drill and Denzel Washington slow-mo-badass-walking through the emergency sprinkler system downpour, The Equalizer is a tough film to diss.
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.
The conclusion of the film takes place in the Home Depot-type store, and basically turns into an R-rated, surprisingly gruesome Home Alone.
The big finale takes place inside the home improvement store where McCall works, and though that provides the MacGyver-like protagonist with plenty of makeshift weapons at his disposal (seriously, it’s like “Home Alone” for adults), nothing beats the image of Denzel walking slo-mo through a shower of water carrying a nail gun.
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I would compare it to something like Taken , a film which The Equalizer resembles in a number of small but useful ways, we're told enough about Liam Neeson's character that we get to feel like we're right there along with him every step of the way; The Equalizer makes it so clear that Washington's character knows more than we do about everything, he almost doesn't feel human.
“The Equalizer,” based on the 1985 television series starring Edward Woodward and adapted for the big screen by Richard Wenk and directed by Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day” which earned Washington his Best Actor Oscar), is a high octane action thriller with an impressive body count of Chechen mobsters that rivals Liam Neeson’s in “Taken.”
The early scenes with Moretz have the creepy sentimentality associated with Taken's Luc Besson (the actual screenwriter in this case is Richard Wenk, an action specialist whose credits include The Expendables 2).
The Equalizer is just Denzel Washington’s chance at launching his first film franchise, a la Liam Neeson’s soon-to-be-concluded Taken series.
Memories of Washington's mentally mangled avenger in Man on Fire (2004) should be dispelled; his McCall is ultra-resourceful, lethally efficient and pretty much indestructible (like Liam Neeson in the Taken films) as he uses his "particular set of skills" to take on Marton Csokas's icy baddie.
A sequel to The Equalizer, a Sequelizer if you like, is already in the works, and while Denzel may seem a little mature to be kicking off a new movie franchise, there’s a current movie vogue for sexagenarians kicking butt: Sixty-two-year-old Liam Neeson is planning his third Taken movie next year, Pierce Brosnan, 61, just did the action flick The November Man, and Sly Stallone, 68, is still stripping down and strapping on in The Expendables series.
It’s practically a reboot of 2004’s “Man on Fire” (itself a remake of a 1987 Scott Glenn picture), which is second only to the operatically unpleasant “Revenge” in the nastiest film Tony Scott ever made.
Not since Rosa Klebb of SMERSH took on James Bond in From Russia With Love a half-century ago has Hollywood been able to revel with cause in the villainy of Eastern European tyrants.
This violent action thriller is based on the 80s TV series with Edward Woodward, though director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) also borrows heavily from David Fincher, aping the arty grunge of Fight Club, the preternatural lighting of Zodiac, and the claustrophobic interiors of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
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His planet of a head and its vengeful compartments reminded me of one of the movies’ most iconic pates: Brando’s in Apocalypse Now.
As Arnold Schwarzenegger's character says of the people he has killed in "True Lies," "They were all bad."