The Equalizer. (15.)
Directed by Antoine Fuqua.
Starring Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloe Grace Moretz, David Harbour, Johnny Skourtis, Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman. 131 mins
I can think of few performers who are so conspicuously and willfully frittering away their talents as Denzel Washington, who for the last decade has mostly applied his casual and seemingly effortless mastery of screen acting to breezing through a selection of lightweight action romps. He pursues the maintenance of his position as a bankable African American movie star (and one who doesn't resort to sequels or franchise flicks) as if it were a noble calling. This time he has extended this crusade to an attempt to assuage Americans' insecurity about their position in the New World Disorder.
His vehicle is an in-name-only version of the 80s TV series where ex-secret serviceman McCall (Edward Woodward) dispensed slightly geriatric vigilante justice in New York City. Never saw an episode myself (it was on ITV and one didn't watch ITV, particularly American rubbish on ITV) but I believe that the point was that Woodward's McCall was one man standing up for the little guys.
This Equalizer opens in Taxi Driver mode with Washington as an everyday guy who can't sleep who ventures out into an all-night diner where everybody seems to bring their own food and drink and where he entangles himself in the fate of a prostitute Teri (Moretz.) Where De Niro's Travis Bickle was psychotic loose canon, Washington is an OCD health Nazi, very particular about cutlery placement and always criticising other people's diets and lifestyles. Having taken on Teri's pimps he finds himself in conflict with the whole of the Russian mafia, represented by tattooed, musclebound Kevin Spacey look-alike Teddy (Csokas.)
Washington's McCall is less vigilante more a one man biblical wrath of God. His powers and abilities are so absolute and far reaching that there isn't a moment of jeopardy in the whole film. You can imagine Batman and James Bond sitting in a cinema open mouth in amazement, wondering how he does it – he's like Charles Bronson in Death Wish but from Krypton.
It is a preposterous and overwrought revenge fantasy but that is what makes it rabble rousing effective. It has the ferocity of a cornered animal and no sense of proportion. It is crushingly violent and Sony have trimmed the violence in two scenes on the BBFC's advice to avoid an 18 rating. (In this aspect it is true to the TV series, which Mary Whitehouse types were always criticising for its violence.) It says something about America and the West's sense of insecurity that the filmmaker's feel that we will respond to something as blunt and as brutish as this but they are probably right. Without Washington it'd be ridiculous but he presents a compelling vision of traditional American righteousness.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua.
Starring Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloe Grace Moretz, David Harbour, Johnny Skourtis, Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman. 131 mins
I can think of few performers who are so conspicuously and willfully frittering away their talents as Denzel Washington, who for the last decade has mostly applied his casual and seemingly effortless mastery of screen acting to breezing through a selection of lightweight action romps. He pursues the maintenance of his position as a bankable African American movie star (and one who doesn't resort to sequels or franchise flicks) as if it were a noble calling. This time he has extended this crusade to an attempt to assuage Americans' insecurity about their position in the New World Disorder.
His vehicle is an in-name-only version of the 80s TV series where ex-secret serviceman McCall (Edward Woodward) dispensed slightly geriatric vigilante justice in New York City. Never saw an episode myself (it was on ITV and one didn't watch ITV, particularly American rubbish on ITV) but I believe that the point was that Woodward's McCall was one man standing up for the little guys.
This Equalizer opens in Taxi Driver mode with Washington as an everyday guy who can't sleep who ventures out into an all-night diner where everybody seems to bring their own food and drink and where he entangles himself in the fate of a prostitute Teri (Moretz.) Where De Niro's Travis Bickle was psychotic loose canon, Washington is an OCD health Nazi, very particular about cutlery placement and always criticising other people's diets and lifestyles. Having taken on Teri's pimps he finds himself in conflict with the whole of the Russian mafia, represented by tattooed, musclebound Kevin Spacey look-alike Teddy (Csokas.)
Washington's McCall is less vigilante more a one man biblical wrath of God. His powers and abilities are so absolute and far reaching that there isn't a moment of jeopardy in the whole film. You can imagine Batman and James Bond sitting in a cinema open mouth in amazement, wondering how he does it – he's like Charles Bronson in Death Wish but from Krypton.
It is a preposterous and overwrought revenge fantasy but that is what makes it rabble rousing effective. It has the ferocity of a cornered animal and no sense of proportion. It is crushingly violent and Sony have trimmed the violence in two scenes on the BBFC's advice to avoid an 18 rating. (In this aspect it is true to the TV series, which Mary Whitehouse types were always criticising for its violence.) It says something about America and the West's sense of insecurity that the filmmaker's feel that we will respond to something as blunt and as brutish as this but they are probably right. Without Washington it'd be ridiculous but he presents a compelling vision of traditional American righteousness.
