My response to a movie is usually cut and dry: either I like it or I don’t. But I could use a coin to help out with “The Equalizer,” a new film based on the ‘80s TV series of the same name. For good reasons, I could go either way.
On one side, “The Equalizer” is a cheesy revenge thriller starring Denzel Washington as Robert McCall, a man with a violent past. McCall has done what he can to put his life as a black ops government operative behind him: He’s single, he works quietly at a hardware store during the day, and he reads novels and drinks hot tea at a diner at night. Essentially, he lives with his demons and he bothers no one – not because it suits him but because he’s determined to keep a promise he made to his late wife to leave the bloodshed behind him.
There’s a problem, though. As McCall is reading Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” he explains the outcome of the novel to Teri, a prostitute he befriends at the diner, saying, “The old man has got to be the old man, and the fish has got to be the fish.” McCall is talking about himself, too. He can live his new life for only so long because who he really is will eventually come out; he simply needs the proper stimulus.
The stimulus comes in the form of Teddy, an enforcer for the Russian mafia. McCall and Teddy are placed on a collision course for one another when McCall kills several Russia mafia after their leader puts Teri, who works for the Russians, in the hospital for insubordination.
Director Antoine Fuqua, who made “Training Day” with Washington, gives viewers a close and personal look at McCall’s unique skill set in the above scene. In less than 30 seconds, he kills five members of the mafia without breaking a sweat. Amusingly, he walks in without any weapons and proceeds to use whatever is handy to achieve his kills, including a shot glass. Good thing he didn’t miss that day in black ops training.
While the fight choreography is impressive, Fuqua and writer Richard Wenk establish McCall as nearly invincible, which drains the movie of suspense. To make up the difference, they make Teddy cartoonishly brutal. Think of the worst Cold War cutouts in film and on television, multiply them by ten, and you’d have Teddy.
Teddy seems unbeatable, too, so when he and McCall finally meet in battle, their fight goes on for too long. Fuqua really could have used an editor with a stronger hand. “The Equalizer” is well over two hours in length, but it feels even longer due to subplots involving additional heroics by McCall. Any of them could have been cut without hurting the movie.
The biggest problem with “The Equalizer,” though, is its lack of meat. When you boil away the time Fuqua and Wenk spend developing McCall as a character and his friendship with Teri, the only thing left is a slick looking but empty thriller. Fuqua and Wenk believe there’s more beneath the surface of the story (in one scene, McCall tells Teri about another book he’s reading in which a man sees himself as a knight in shining armor, but he lives in a world in which knights no longer exist), but if there was, they failed to bring it out.
All of that said, there is the other side of the coin. “The Equalizer” is an effective character study. Fuqua and Wenk spend a lot of time in the beginning nurturing the audience’s affection for McCall. Long scenes following him through his daily routine, show his kindness for others, and set him up as a man of solitude with a bundle of dynamite inside of him. Marton Csokas also manages to turn Teddy from a Cold War cliché into a beautifully rendered portrait of a terrifying man.
In the end, I fall more in favor of “The Equalizer” than against it, largely because Washington is, as always, a pleasure to watch. I do, however, hope Wenk infuses the script for the sequel, which he’s currently writing, with more substance.
Two-and-a-half stars out of four. Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, including sexual references.