Movie Review: The Equalizer

The Equalizer (2014)


A man believes he has put his mysterious past behind him and has dedicated himself to beginning a new, quiet life. But when he meets a young girl under the control of ultra-violent Russian gangsters, he can't stand idly by - he has to help her.  Short synopsis of The Equalizer taken from IMDb.com

I'm old enough to remember seeing the series The Equalizer on TV.  You know, I recall as a kid thinking that this particular vigilante crime drama was somewhat unique for its time.  Granted, it wasn't my favorite TV show, but I did like it.  So when I saw the previews for this modern take on the show, I was a bit excited.  And when I saw Denzel Washington was the lead, I was impressed.  After all, Denzel brings it.  He does earnest and dead-eyed real well.

So having seen the film, did I feel it did the idea justice?  Well, yes, and no. 

As a basic rundown, what we have here is a pretty simple one man vigilante-style movie.  Washington's character is this former... something - the film is never quite clear on the guy's actual background, though from his skill set, it must have been pretty deep stuff - who is living as simple a life as possible.  He becomes embroiled in a one man mob war when a prostitute who spends her off-hours at the diner he also frequents is brutally beaten up. 


That intro really plays into fear, doesn't it?  I didn't realize it at the time of course, being just a kid. 

I'd like to say there is more to the plot, but really, that's it.  Washington's character begins righting wrongs in his community after this first step into violence, in which he kills five Russian mobsters.  Afterward, we see him tweaking some crooked cops, and there is even an implied hunting down of a shoplifter who steals a ring from one of the character's co-workers.  At the same time, the Russian oligarch (oligarchs = corrupt businessmen who run the Russian private economy) has sent in his best man to hunt down Washington's character and get rid of him.  The two play cat and mouse throughout the film, ending with the climax where the good guy exacts western justice and the bad guy gets his.  Then there is a brief concluding bit with Washington's character going after the Russian oligarch himself, and then back in the states, meeting the former-prostitute and encouraging her in the change of life she has decided to pursue.  Roll credits.

It sounds stereotypical, and it is.  The film goes down a pretty well-trodden path, and does it with all the violence you'd expect for this sort of situation.  Washington's character kills with swift and deadly precision.  To his credit (and fitting the stereotype) he gives the bad guys a chance to make a better choice, but in the end, bad guys gotta be bad, I suppose.  As for the bad guys, we have some stereotypical mobsters, of the Russian sort and of some other ethnicitys as well.  We have the stereotypical oligarch character whom we see only for a moment at the end, but he fits the image of a Russian oligarch up, down and sideways.  We have some stereotypical crooked cops.  We have a stereotypical fat guy friend who saves the day at the end, after some pretty heavy-handed foreshadowing at the beginning of the film.  We have some stereotypical henchmen types.  And of course, we have the stereotypical head bad guy, a man who speaks with an accent we can't quite chase down, but we are told is a Russian national, former special forces for that nation, and is one bad mother, as the saying goes.  The perfect foil to our hero, as it were.

For someone who has worked at a major hardware retailer (wink, nod), I thought "Home Mart" was pretty thinly disguised.  The store layout was...  a major hardware retailer...  almost exactly.  Except for the end where the security guard says: "The P.A. is in the security office," which is silly because you can call over the P.A. from any phone in one of those buildings.  How inconvenient it is to have to go to the security office just to call for some help in the lumber department, I'd say.  But it was necessary for the plot at the moment the line was delivered, so we move along like it was perfectly normal. / Source: digitaltrends.com

Having said the film is stereotypical, you may think this means I thought the film was bad.  Not entirely.  I didn't need this movie to be more than what it was, and that goes in its favor.  It is exactly what it is, and makes no apologies for it.  In fact, I didn't get the feeling that the filmmakers were trying to make this film more than just a lone vigilante doing good-type of movie.  It runs the rails throughout almost the entire viewing.  For instance, at one point, our protagonist has been shot (and stereotypically, he gets wounded a few times throughout, but always manages to tough it out, of course), and he is in what we think is his apartment, bandaging himself up.  At the same time, we see cuts to the head bad guy and his henchmen breaking into the apartment and heading toward the sound of running water in the bathroom.  Anybody and their dear aunt Trudy could tell you that our hero won't be in the room when the bad guys open the door, but the film does the number anyway, and everybody dances on cue.  Door opens, bathroom is empty, hero is in a similar apartment across the way, and thus is safe.  And he knew they were coming all along, of course.

But as I said, in this instance, I am more poking fun at the movie's lack of originality than criticizing it.  It did what it did without any high-mindedness in the doing, and for that I could respect it, and even enjoy it to a certain extent.  Wait, there are two things that annoyed me.  Let me point those out, and I'll be done.



Alexander Pushkin, born June 6, 1977, died February 10, 1837.  He was 37 at the time of his death.  A classic tragic Russian figure, and one of Russian's most revered poets.  Naming the head villain in The Equalizer after him was more than a bit on the nose, I thought. / Source: Wikipedia.org

First, the Russian oligarch's name, or at least the one he goes by, is Pushkin.  Now I know a lot of Slavic names sound the same to American ears, but in my case, I know the name Pushkin.  He is one of the Russians' most celebrated poets.  There is a certain irony about using that name for the Russian big bad guy here.  On the one hand, Pushkin sounds a fair degree like Putin, and since the United States is once again on less-than-friendly terms with the Russians, semi-vaguely poking at that nation's leader is certainly not something we mind doing. 

But in a deeper vein where maybe I am simply inferring where no inference was intended, using the name of "Pushkin" for the head RUSSIAN bad guy smacks of taking a whack at everything Russian in general.  It's like naming your Middle Eastern terrorist for your film "Muhammad," or your hero for an American film "Lincoln."  It's like taking a shot not just at some Russians who do bad things, but at the entire Russian culture.  Like I said, maybe I am reading more into this here than is extent, but I found it a bit...  pointed.  Maybe unintentionally, maybe with malice afore-thought.  You make that call.

Much of the film had a veneer of reality on it, and you could almost suspend disbelief.  The scene depicted above was not one of those moments though.  Our protagonist blows up some freight belonging to the Russian mob, and the resulting explosion does a very unconvincingly stylized CGI blast effect up behind the aloof Washington, who walks out with a billowing gas cloud just at his heels.  Uhmm..  folks, fire burns.  It doesn't have to do it by touching you either. He's have gotten quite the thermal bake from this sequence, if it was real.  Just silly, I thought. / Source: indiewire.com

The second issue is, if our protagonist is such a superhero, why hasn't he been out solving real problems?  Sure, he's retired.  But really if this guy is so good, why isn't he assassinating Kim Jong Un or even -gasp- Vladimir Putin, and making the world safe for democracy?  The way they play it, our hero can do no wrong.  I do find only slightly flawed heroes to be highly unrealistic, for myself.  But the movie is a simple one, so having a deeply complex hero would go against the grain.  We Americans don't mind in the slightest if our heroes can exact terrible violence upon bad people, as long as they are nice regular Joes the rest of the time, it seems.  Silly, but there it is.

As for my feelings on the film in general?  Well I would have probably been more disappointed if I'd spent more money on seeing The Equalizer.  I got it at the Redbox, and that was about what it was worth to me.  The film contains some pretty striking and prevalent violence, both implied and shown, as well as strong language and adult themes (such as the idea that a young woman would participate in prostitution when what she dreams of doing is being a pop singer, and we all know stuff like that never happens in real life -nod, nod-). 

For myself, I'd recommend The Equalizer to those who would enjoy some fairly mindless vigilante-style violence and action, and can stomach the banality.  I say these things and you'd think I was insulting the film, but like I keep reasserting, I'm not.  It is what it is.  If you expect any more than that, you'd be sorely disappointed.  Washington sells it well, and everybody puts in their parts with enough investment to make it feel believable.  But you won't be mentally taxed by The Equalizer.  Nor, I would bet, will you be watching this one more than once, if you do see it.  It's throw-away entertainment, at best.


The parting comment:


Speaking of all old things that are new again...  And wow - apparently, old NES games are still good!  Or some of them.  And we don't mean as blocks to shim up the bad leg of the old sofa down in the basement while you play Super NES games via emulator, either.

25 NES Games That Are Still Super Fun