The Equalizer

I have wax nostalgic on here before how the stereotypical one-man army/vigilante flicks are a huge guilty pleasure of mine. Most of those films were campy 80s/90s action classics of the Schwarzenegger/Stallone variety. Hollywood grew out of them it seemed for the longest time, but in 2014 we got two awesome contemporary takes on the one-man army genre and they both hit theaters within a month of each other. John Wick is one of those films (which I hope to cover here eventually), but the one we are focusing on today is The Equalizer (trailer).

Academy Award winner, Denzel Washington leads this film as Robert McCall. He is a man of habit trying to continue living peacefully in a new life, but trouble keeps finding his way and ultimately it results in him bringing back a cold-blooded military persona that he thought he permanently shelved. I loved all the little quirks The Equalizer introduces about Robert early on like his obsession with reading all the books on the ‘100 Must-Reads’ list and guiding every task he is about to embark on to his trusty stopwatch.

The movie establishes sympathy in the introductory scenes for Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), a young woman trapped in the sex-slave industry but keeps bumping into Robert late night at a local 24-hour diner that both frequent. After seeing Teri repeatedly get awful treatment from her management, Robert decides to take matters into his own hands and deal with Teri’s superiors in a glorious scene that transpires in all of 16 seconds (sort of). This leads to the Russian mob sending their top sleuth/hitman simply known as ‘Teddy’ (Marton Csokas) to track Robert down and take him out.

Once Robert finds out the Russian mob is onto him, he goes in full on ‘awww hell no’ mode and procedurally shuts down the Russian mob’s entire New York operation throughout the film as he takes out corrupt cops and lieutenants working directly for the Russians and eventually even their entire money laundering operation in another stunning scene. During his down time, he is working his day job at the Lowe’s knockoff ‘Home Mart’ and helps motivate his affable coworker Ralphie (Johnny Skourtis) cut weight to pass the security guard test, what a guy!

If you cannot tell by now, The Equalizer does a perfect job at setting up Robert McCall as the love-able hero that you want to see give the Russians their just deserts. Denzel knocks the role out of the park, especially when I learned that he reconnected here with the same director (Antoine Fuqua) he worked with in Training Day that lead to him winning a Best Actor Oscar. If there is something to nitpick here it would be that McCall is rarely in peril throughout the film since he is consistently two-steps ahead of the Russians. The Russians finally appear to get an ace up their sleeve when they kidnap Robert’s coworkers, but then they make the mistake of inviting McCall for their final battle at the ‘ol Home-Mart that Robert knows like the back of his hand and is full of countless types of DIY weaponry that McCall takes advantage of in a climatic final showdown. I will give Denzel a pass here for not taking too much of a beating here, since it is a riot watching him constantly one-up the Russians throughout.

There is about an hour of extra features on the BluRay. ‘Vengeance Mode’ is billed as a second viewing experience with 23 minutes of interview clips pasted in before pivotal scenes of the movie that Denzel & Fuqua break down and reminisce over. They are insightful interviews, but I would have preferred a commentary track from the duo instead. Aside from that there are six shorter extras all under 10 minutes each. All of them are nice short collections of interviews dealing with various themes such as praise for ‘The Equalizer’ character, shooting the fights and love for Denzel & Fuqua. All are quick, worthwhile watches, but if you only had time for one I would recommend jumping into Inside Equalizer first.

There is too much to love in The Equalizer and I feel bad for holding off this long to watch it again. The film is brilliantly casted from top-to-bottom and has perfect heroes and villains to cheer and jeer. It is well paced and has a fitting score throughout that pipes in at all the right moments. If you have been longing for one-man army films since the previous century than you will not go wrong with The Equalizer. I will also give thanks to the NBA Finals for which The Equalizer 2 sponsored game two of the series and I was not aware of the follow-up until then and that motivated me to bump Equalizer out of the backlog box before the successor hit theaters!

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

3
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Deck the Halls
Dredd
The Eliminators
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Ink
The Interrogation
Joy Ride 1-3
Interstellar
Jobs
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Marine 3-5
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Reservoir Dogs
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Vision Quest
The War
Wild
Wonder Woman
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past