He’s essentially playing a superhero, although Marvel would never let Iron Man or Captain America wallow in the hard-R gore and sadism that McCall generates, most salaciously in an extended battle at Home Mart during which our man uses every power tool at his disposal to bloodily dismantle his opponents (I hope he at least got the employee discount when he paid for it all the next day). No matter how many Russians show up, McCall always comes out on top, and it’s Washington’s impassive yet still undeniably charismatic screen persona that gets the viewer through the increasingly dreary carnage. This is all about getting to the stuff people are paying for, even if it takes a while for Wenk and director Antoine Fuqua to get there: McCall laying waste to an office full of Russian gangsters, McCall taking out a pair of sleazy, corrupt cops, and finally McCall taking on even more Russians, who come out of the woodwork like ants, without even breaking a sweat. Wenk does the same with supporting characters after she is hospitalized, Moretz disappears for almost the rest of the movie, while a Home Mart employee (Johnny Skourtis) whom McCall helps ace the test for security guard also pops conveniently in and out only when needed. The Equalizer could almost fit into Neeson’s recent run of generic action thrillers by virtue of Richard Wenk’s screenplay, which sets up a few potentially interesting ideas (like the OCD thing) and then just as quickly discards them. But the Washington model has the same nasty skill set as Woodward when it comes to dispatching bad guys - a lethal talent that seems to be peculiar to men in their late 50s and early 60s, as Liam Neeson can also attest. And did I tell you that the new one has OCD? That’s why he opens and closes a door several times and arranges his tableware just so every night before having tea. The TV Equalizer drove a Jag this one takes a bus. He’s a widower while Woodward’s McCall was divorced, and he has no children (at least as far as we know) while Woodward had a son who wanted to get into his line of work as well. Maybe they'll be remembered again when McCall returns for a sequel, which this film is obviously quite determined to set up.The movie’s version of McCall is in some ways less complicated that the TV edition personified by Edward Woodward for four seasons. Instead, he just takes a quick trip to a country house.Īs McCall returns refreshed to singlehandedly overturn an oligopoly, a film that had started by engaging with issues of ageing and loss has forgotten such petty concerns entirely. He's so convincing at being tougher than everyone else that we never get that end-of-the-second-act moment where it looks as if everything is lost. But Denzel's strength is also his weakness. Denzel is so cool, so made of pure nails he can make even the most preposterous action scene feel thrilling. Secondly, there's the even older chestnut of how the audience suspends disbelief as the toughest (and most tooled-up) killers east of the Danube get laced by a man who can remember the moon landings.įortunately for Fuqua, this ain't just any old 59-year-old. Firstly, there's the desensitisation-to-violence chestnut as Teddy (a just about convincing Marton Csokas) starts popping people with ever more lurid brutality. There are two problems with this turn of events. Soon enough dozens of people are being blown up, shot dead and having their testicles shoved in their mouths. The organisation is headed by a man called Pushkin who sends his enforcer, Teddy, to tie things up. The pimps are, naturally, the lowest orders of a massive Russian crime syndicate who trade in everything from people to oil. Then McCall heads to a well-appointed private bar and takes out Lena's assailants in all of 28 seconds, putting a corkscrew to effective use in the process, and things go entirely to pot.
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