The Equalizer

So I saw The Equalizer and it was a lot of fun! The director, Antoine Fuqua is very skilled at creating violent action movies with enough characterization to keep you interested during the slow bits, and this is no different. Here’s the deal: In the first fight of the movie Denzel Washington stabs a dude to death with a corkscrew, and if that sounds awesome to you then you’ll probably enjoy this movie. If it sounds unnecessarily gory then you should probably see something else.

Personally, I’m a big fan of corkscrew murder. One of my favorite kind of action movie characters is the guy who enters a situation without any guns or anything of their and instead fights with weapons and random objects that they acquire during the fight. This movie is all about that kind of crazy environmental based fighting, especially the final battle, which takes place in a giant Home Depot-type hardware store.

One thing I thought was interesting about this movie is that it has kind of an episodic structure. Sort of like what I assume the TV show the movie is based on,  Denzel Washington’s character is confronted by a number of situation that require his abilities to be solved, and are sort of disconnected from the main plot of the movie. I could see how some could see this as making the movie disjointed, but it worked really well for me.

Some of the supporting players in the movie do really good jobs, especially Marton Csokas as the bad guy, a psychopathic Russian mob enforcer.  Chlöe Grace Moretz is a decent ingénue, though I was surprised by how little she’s in it given her prominent spot in the trailer and other advertising. But really this movie is 100% about Denzel Washington doing his dangerous calm persona, which I always find to be very entertaining. In all this is an extremely entertaining movie with great action and suspense. Definitely worth your time.