Like the rest of the world, I really enjoyed what director Antoine Fuqua accomplished with Training Day. With Denzel Washington in the leading role, the result was an extremely strong cop/crime drama. To our advantage, they’ve re-teamed for The Equalizer and, once again, they’ve churned out gold.
Washington leads The Equalizer as a quiet, likeable and highly organized older guy who spends the majority of his neat little life at his Home Depot-ish job. Just as his co-workers do, we the audience speculate as to what he did in his past life. Of course, we’ve seen the trailers and TV spots, so we know that he has the potential to be an extremely violent man. Exactly what he did in his past and why, we don’t know – but we’re about to find out exactly what he’s capable of. Washington’s character is a good man, a very moral man. So, when he stands up for a teenage Russian sex slave (Chloë Grace Moretz), he comes out of retirement.
In the beginning, his only motive is to get the Russian pimps to free his young friend, but when their arrogance gets the best of them, he unleashes and destroys them all in an amazingly entertaining burst of violence. After a great build-up of character, we finally get to the goods and the tension never lets up. It doesn’t take long for him to realize that these baddies were just the tip of the iceberg, and there’s no going back after opening this can of worms.
I had hoped to be entertained by The Equalizer, but never expected to be as completely satisfied as I was. The brilliant part about it is that Fuqua’s directing takes it from being a standard thriller and turns it into a solid piece of filmmaking. I dare you to walk into The Equalizer and not leave it is a completely content customer.
(Photo credit: Sony Pictures)
