A man believes he has put his mysterious past behind him and has
dedicated himself to beginning a new, quiet life. But when he meets a
young girl under the control of ultra-violent Russian gangsters, he
can't stand idly by - he has to help her.
Director:
Antoine Fuqua
Writers: Richard Wenk,
Michael Sloan (television series)
|
Stars: Denzel Washington,
Marton Csokas,
Chloë Grace Moretz
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Equalizer Storyline:
In The Equalizer, Denzel Washington plays McCall, a man who believes he
has put his mysterious past behind him and dedicated himself to
beginning a new, quiet life. But when McCall meets Teri (Chloë Grace
Moretz), 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.
Equalizer Movies Reviews:
Antoine
Fuqua's big screen adaptation of the 80′s TV series The Equalizer opens
with an impressive tracking shot through an open window, and into the
orderly and near empty apartment, belonging to Robert McCall (Denzel
Washington). McCall lives a Spartan existence; for the first twenty
minutes of the picture, he hardly says a word. Fuqua (Training Day)
gives a lengthy shot as you watch McCall fold something delicately into a
napkin. When you see him unfold the napkin at his regular diner, and
place the teabag into a cup of hot water, you understand immediately
that this man is a creature of habit, firmly set in his ways. Every
night he's there, reading a book. He's such a regular, that he strikes
up a familiar acquaintance in a young teenage prostitute, Teri (Chloe
Grace Moretz)), which eventually grows into something of a friendship.
There is something undeniably hidden within him, however. When he
realizes the danger Teri is in thanks to her nefarious Russian pimps, he
forgoes his cautious life, and willingly brings on the pain.
Director
Fuqua accordingly really brings on the style for these sequences. His
relative quiet touches give way to mayhem. Before every murder McCall
commits, the camera slows down, taking on a golden hue, and you
literally see McCall breaking down every element of his victims:
tattoos, facial expressions. And then he lets loose: even timing himself
to see if he can voice dispatch Mafiosi in 30 seconds or less.
And
The Equalizer is undeniably fun. It's one of those thrillers that
begins moody and atmospheric, and then decides it would be more fun to
see how many people can be dispatched with nail guns or corkscrew
openers; and it is similarly unconcerned with logic in the idea that
McCall decides to take down the entire East Coast hub of the Russian
mafia, simply over one teenage prostitute. But with Fuqua this
stylistically assured, and Washington equally game, does it really
matter?
As Teri, Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick Ass, Carrie) forgoes
the sarcastic strategy Jodie Foster used as a teenage hooker in
Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Teri is arguably much more frightened of her
violent handlers, and is less given to false bravado as result. And even
though her character really amounts to little more than a glorified
supporting part after she is sent away, she is a great deal of fun to
watch, and she holds her own more than capably against Denzel Washington
(The Book Of Eli). The habit of extended cameos in The Equalizer is
even more extreme in the case of Melissa Leo as Robert's former CIA
contact, who pops up to give a vital piece of information on the evil
mobster, and to tentatively tiptoe around the subject of his wife, while
offering a small measure of comfort. The bit part parade reaches
"blink-and-you-miss him" cameo status, by casting a reputable star like
Bill Pullman as Leo's husband, and giving him no more than four lines
(though of course it's possible that this may be a larger part that met
with cuts in the editing room).
If anything, a weakness of The
Equalizer is that McCall's troubled personal life is left as somewhat
ambiguous. Who can blame it really? The opening aims for a quiet kind of
profundity, and it succeeds, but isn't really interested in following
through. For all its thin characterization, there is something just as
nice in watching Denzel Washington coldly and calculatingly firing a
nail gun in righteous vengeance.
