Equalizer denzel washington8/11/2023 ![]() He's also apparently OCD, continually rearranging the utensils on the table.)ĭeservedly or not, the movie is elevated several echelons by Washington's Father Knows Best (How to Kill Slimeballs) performance. Is he overqualified for The Equalizer? Are you saying that just because this movie would've starred Steven Seagal back when Washington was playing Malcolm X for Spike Lee, but would otherwise have differed little from the version we're watching in 2014? (Washington's character, McCall, even brings his own teabags to the all-night diner where he hangs out reading leatherbound classics when he can't sleep, furtively tossing them in his cup the instant before the waiter pours his hot water. But Washington is even better at it, and of course he has not one but two Oscar statuettes he can reach for when he needs a makeshift weapon. Liam Neeson has played minor variations on this Sad Jedi role even more times than Washington. (Sidebar: When did the celibacy thing become pervasive in action movies? Is it because of PG-13 creep, or because the median age of our action leads has shot up by 20 years?) The film around it remains a hummable, easy-to-digest entry in a long line of monastic plainclothes superhero flicks about penitent and unknowable widowers. ![]() The picture's soundtrack runs more to Eminem and – since we're already talking about dirty little crime pictures buffed and polished and inflated to portentous scale - the same Moby song Michael Mann used to introduce Al Pacino and Robert De Niro's historic tete-a-tete in Heat 19 years ago. Your mileage may vary.įrom its Edward Woodward-starring '80s CBS primetime forebear, The Equalizer has inherited a title and vague premise – retired covert-ops badass uses Murderous Jedi Skills to help the meek – but not, unfortunately, Police drummer Stewart Copeland's New Wave theme music. Like their prior collaboration, it scrapes together two gripping, closely observed acts before lobotomizing itself for an over-the-top final third that tips the needle from "Pleasure" to "Pleasure, Guilty, Shame on You!" I liked the lengthy first act where Washington walks the Earth – well, part of Boston – dispensing inspiration and literary analysis of great novels he's read and dietary advice even better than the (longer) part where he's dispensing justice. But it's a better fit for the surprisingly patient, unsurprisingly violent movie they've made. That's a different Twain quote from the one that appears onscreen at the top of The Equalizer, the Zen vigilante flick reuniting Training Day director and star Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time." "A man has a quarrel with another man and kills him then that other man's brother kills him then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another then the cousins chip in - and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. "A feud is this way," Mark Twain wrote in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Denzel Washington stars as a retired intelligence officer in The Equalizer.
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