(USA, 131 min.)
Dir. Antoine Fuqua, Writ. Richard Wenk
Starring: Denzel Washington, Martin Csokas, Chloë Grace
Moretz, David Harbour, Johnny Skourtis, Melissa Leo.
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| Denzel Washington stars in The Equalizer. |
The Equalizer
suggests that the line between a “Denzel Washington film” and a “Liam Neeson
movie” is slowly becoming a fine one. A “Denzel Washington film,” as my
moviegoing companion and I discussed while we semi-eagerly awaited the sneak
peek of The Equalizer to start, generally
features the debonair Denzel in some suave role that is morally grounded, yet
often has a hint of coolness that only Mr. Washington can convey. He might, Training Day aside, play a good guy with
a vice or a baddie with a virtue, and the audience generally looks forward to a
good performance, some action, and a clean ending.
A “Liam Neeson movie,” on the other hand, generally features wolves getting punched; some daughters getting taken; wives getting taken, too; and signs of age. What sets a “Liam Neeson movie” apart from the pack, The Lego Movie aside, is that the audience generally recognizes some flicker of shame, humiliation, and (strangely) acceptance that Neeson is a long way from Schindler’s List. Washington generally pulls off anything—he even makes Flight worth watching—while Liam Neeson survives on paycheck mode so long as one is paying Cheap Tuesday pricing.
The Equalizer,
then, marks a genuine disappointment in Washington’s trajectory. His
performance is by all regards fine here as he coolly carries Robert McCall
through a blood-drenched revenge saga, but The
Equalizer seems like the first time that Washington really mails it in.
This material is beneath him.
The Equalizer
pulls Washington into Neeson territory as it charts a serviceable ho-hum
Hollywood thriller that doesn’t really thrill and piles on stylish action with
a healthy dose of inadvertent comedy. Yes, this adaptation of the cult 1980s TV
show starring Edward Woodward feels like a dated Hollywood commodity even
though director Antoine Fuqua (Training
Day) peppers it with sleek aesthetics and ambiguous allegorical chords.
That The Equalizer reunites
Washington and Fuqua after the pair collaborated on Washington’s Oscar-winning
turn in Training Day only adds to the
disappointment. For all the talent involved in The Equalizer, plus Chloë Grace Moretz, the film comes to nothing.
Washington goes around killing people as an OCD
ex-intelligence officer with a Robin Hood-ish moral code in which he robs from
the rich and fights for the poor. His comes out of shadows and goes into Taxi Driver mode when a teenage
prostitute named Teri (a fidgety Moretz) survives a nasty beating from her
Russian pimp. McCall’s first hit is a hyper-stylized exercise in gratuitous
violence. McCall has a silly tick where he times all his activities with a wristwatch
to chart his progress, and he wipes out a Russian mob using corkscrews and shot
glasses in less than thirty seconds. Fuqua shoots the frenzied bloodbath as
might Wong Kar Wai, but the dizzying sheen of the sequence only underscores the
overall artlessness of it. There really isn’t much to The Equalizer besides bloodlust and revenge fantasy.
Fuqua and screenwriter Richard Wenk (The Expendables 2) do some nifty things in the final act of the
film using the singular setting of McCall’s new workplace, a Home Depot-type
big box hardware store, which lets The
Equalizer showcase McCall’s resourcefulness as a trained killer. Doorknobs,
branch cutters, sledgehammers, and nail guns all provide creative tools of
trade to take the bloodbath beyond gunplay, but the film’s creativity with
McCall’s weaponry betrays what a hollow, empty, and mechanical exercise in
gratuitous violence the film ultimately is. McCall kills for sport far more
than he does to right the wrongs of the baddies. (And even a granny knows that
two wrongs don’t make a right!) The film simply lacks the moral centre of a
typical Washington film (even Training
Day has one even though Washington plays a ruthless villain) despite his
best efforts to elevate the film with his performance.
The Equalizer tries
to add some jovial character with a subplot between McCall and his hardware
store colleague, Ralphie (Johnny Skourtis), whom McCall coaches to become a
security guard. Ralphie is a goof, though, a ham character of comic relief in a
film of otherwise unrelenting sternness and mercilessness. Skourtis’s performance
as the silly sidekick invites the words ‘Sofia Coppola in Godfather III bad’ as his gee-golly-gosh theatrics derail any
seriousness and plausibility that The
Equalizer uses graphic violence for anything other than pure entertainment.
The Equalizer also
overstays its welcome for well over half an hour as the slow pace and overall
emptiness of the violence struggles to provide a jolt. It’s boring. Fuqua often
drags the film out with bizarre long takes and Steadicam shots that suggest
that The Equalizer doesn’t quite know
what kind of film it wants to be, as it tries to get inside the head of a
character that only Washington seems to handle. As the centre of a character
study, though, Washington nevertheless remains characteristically likable as he
maintains his charisma while channelling the find of a brutal killer. His
confidence commands the film as best it can, retains a level of dignity amidst
the pandemonium, and thankfully suggests that Washington's star power has not yet been taken.
Rating: ★½ (out of ★★★★★)
The Equalizer opens in theatres Sept. 26th.
