Denzel Washington's 'Equalizer'

In Antoine Fuqua’s “The Equalizer,” three things are certain for those who terrorize the weak—death, taxes and a deliciously gruesome end courtesy of Robert McCall.

Denzel Washington plays McCall, the titular “equalizer” in this action thriller, marking the first time Washington has reunited with director Antoine Fuqua since 2001’s electrifying “Training Day,” which netted Denzel Washington an Oscar for Best Actor.

The story follows blue-collar employee McCall, a former military operative, and his vigilante struggle against a Russian crime empire. Provoked by their abuse of a teenage prostitute (Chloë Grace Moretz playing the slightly less naïve counterpart to Jodie Foster’s Iris from “Taxi Driver”), McCall begins his siege on progressively higher levels of the Russian syndicate, facing his ultimate adversary in a psychopathic mob fixer named Teddy (Marton Csokas).

We’ve seen these characters before: Robert McCall is the latest in the line of resurgent John McClane-brand heroes (à la Liam Neeson in “Taken”)—incorruptible, hyperbolically competent and undeterred by overwhelming odds. Likewise, Teddy fits the big bad mold well. He’s foreign, sadistic, and far more intelligent than any of his brainlessly arrogant underlings—smart enough to realize by the film’s climax that McCall is in a class of his own. The cookie-cutter nature of this film is exploited to mixed results. Where standout performances shine through, we can not only ignore the derivative elements but also relish in the masterful execution of familiar, traditional heroes. Other times, however, “The Equalizer” ranges from bland to outright ridiculous.

Denzel Washington, looming 60th birthday notwithstanding, plays the role of the cerebral action hero to perfection. In this film, the character of McCall is certainly “untouchable” (he cauterizes his own wounds mid-battle), but Washington makes it clear through his eyes that McCall is often personally lost despite his clear sense of justice. We learn later the reason for this—McCall’s “past life,” one that he is running away from, is the very identity that he must embrace to combat wrongdoing. This aspect of the character appears to be attracting some modest Oscar buzz for Denzel, which will almost certainly not translate to a win or even a nomination, but nonetheless serves as a testament to the range of his repertoire. Unfortunately for the bad guys of this film, McCall switches gears from conflicted detective to badass action hero without hesitation, and Washington excels in his portrayal of this respect as well. Curiously, the film’s first action scene seems to be a flagrant copy of Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” sequences—McCall surveys a flock of enemies in grainy slow-mo, then effortlessly dispatches them as if in a time warp. Thankfully, this gimmick is not reused later in the film, and in the major action scene of the third act, we see just how many home improvement tools McCall can use to eliminate a small army. The answer is a lot (a personal favorite was the electric drill to the back of the head).

On the side of the villains, there is less to rave about. Csokas’s Teddy is simply not as convincing or consistent as Washington, resulting in a distracting, emotionless caricature. Csokas had the charisma of a TV criminal of the week and far from enough gravitas or idiosyncrasy to match up against Washington’s McCall. What was also confusing were certain additions to the film that seemed ridiculously unnecessary. Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo, for example, drop by for less than five minutes of screen time near the movie’s end simply to reiterate the fact that McCall was once a black ops operative. David Harbour also has an ultimately cursory role as a corrupt cop. These superfluous characters, however, were not outdone by the film’s comically inappropriate end sequence, which was tacky and overzealous.

If you can overlook its decidedly clichéd aspects, however, “The Equalizer” is an entertaining film that is brilliantly gratuitous in violence and even wanders briefly into the profound thanks to the steady hand of Denzel Washington. Early in the film, we see McCall comment regarding Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”—“You’ve gotta be who you are in this world”—and thankfully, Antoine Fuqua’s “The Equalizer” has no illusions. It is what it is, no more and no less.

—Contributing writer Steven S.K. Hao can be reached at stevenhao@college.harvard.edu