If you were lucky enough to catch Denzel Washington in “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway, you saw the hugely charismatic actor portray, in an iconic role, the full complexity of a human being: strengths and weaknesses, attributes and flaws, durability and vulnerability. All topped off, of course, with that boyish Washington charm.
Alas, Washington doesn’t always choose big-screen roles similarly worthy of his unique talent. This is especially true of “The Equalizer,” a mediocre thriller that tries to establish the 59-year-old actor as a middle-aged action hero, à la Liam Neeson. Here, we get to see Washington kill a lot of people in somewhat inventive ways.
“The Equalizer” isn’t a terrible movie, as action sagas go. It just doesn’t nearly live up to what it aspires to be, which is a smart, classy update of the 1980s TV series of the same name, about an ex-government agent who spends his retirement as a sort of ultraviolent avenging angel, rubbing out villains who treat good people badly.
Changes have been made—liberally. On TV, Robert McCall (Edward Woodward) was a debonair middle-aged guy in a trench coat, collar upturned, cruising the streets of New York in a black Jaguar. Here, no trench coat, no Jaguar, no New York.
Director Antoine Fuqua and writer Richard Wenk have moved the action to Boston, and Washington’s McCall is a blue-collar type. A widower with few possessions, he spends his days working at the Home Mart, and his nights reading literary classics and drinking tea at the diner.
It’s at this diner that McCall befriends a sweet young prostitute (Chloë Grace Moretz). And when her pimps—nasty Russian mob types, straight from central casting—rough her up so badly that she ends up clinging to life in a hospital, McCall’s vigilante instincts emerge.
He confronts the thugs, trying to buy her freedom. They laugh. Bad move. Using his hypervision skills, he sizes up the room and dispatches every thug within seconds (he’s counting), using handy props like a corkscrew.
