By Kyle Osborne
We go to the movies for lots of reasons—to put away our cares for a couple of hours, or to be taken to a location which we’ll probably never see in “real life.” But sometimes we simply want to see the good guy prevail over the bad guy—and who better to play that part than Denzel Washington?
Denzel is “The Equalizer”. He works by day at the Home Mart and reads books alone at a diner by night—he’s obviously a guy who’s haunted by his past, and a guy who surely had a very different career at some point.
Denzel is the guy who quietly comes to the rescue of people being bullied—in this story, mostly by Russian mobsters, who he takes out in an extremely graphic and, quite frankly, satisfying scene. It’s a lesson in precision killing. No anger, no emotion, just a guy doing what has to be done.
When word gets back to Moscow that this lone mystery man is to blame for the carnage, a villain who’d be at home in a James Bond flick is sent over to take him out. By the way, why do the meanest villains seem to dress so well? This fey yet ferocious killer even wears a tie!
The honest truth is that “The Equalizer” contains no real surprises, so if you’re looking for surprise endings or sophisticated plot twists—if you’re looking to learn something—this isn’t your movie.
But almost since the inception of storytelling through film—from Westerns to World War 2 movies to this one, we enjoy that uniquely cathartic experience of seeing the bad guys get their due, something that doesn’t always happen in real life, as we all know. Washington has always had the uncanny ability to make us care about his characters, no matter who they are. He’s sophisticated, some might say, to the point of being above the pulpy content.
But I say he’s the best reason to see “The Equalizer”, which gets 3 out of 4 stars. It’s rated R.
Thanks KO, looking forward to this.