The Equalizer Movie Review (2014)

action, crime, movie review, the equalizer, thriller,

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The Equalizer is directed by Antoine Fuqua and stars Denzel Washington. This project went between a lot of different hands before it’s finally landed into the lap of Antoine Fuqua. Originally Nicholas Winding Refn was going to direct this movie, which is not very surprising because a lot of his trade mark violence in his movie.
Chloe Grace Moretz plays a young prostitute in this movie and Denzel Washington is a man with a mysterious past. He often meets her at this diner, kind of watches over her and eventually decides to protect her when some evil man beat her up.
This brings his mysterious past back into forth and he’s on a mission to find all of the Russian gang and take them out. While people are getting nailed and beaten until they can’t even move anymore, Denzel Washington is the one thing that carry this movie along and give it the credibility that it’s deserved.
It’s a fun movie with a pretty strong villain, and see them both in their act was some of my favorite parts of this movie. In fact, my favorite scene in this movie is a very intense conversation with both of them in a restaurant.
Some people are going to be really turned up by the over the top violence in this movie because it’s not really handled with much reason. In the past where films like Drive (2011) have violent and it was in there and it felt like actually it has something to do with the character of the driver that he have like this strange past which he’s trying to withhold this psychotic insane part of him, Denzel Washington’s character of The Equalizer seems fairly sane. And so some of the things that he does, some of the sore or home alone, feel like just there for entertainment value and sometime some of the trap I thought became a little over the top and maybe even a little unnecessary.
My main issue with this movie is there are just too many side plots. There is the character of Chloe Grace Moretz who shows up for a while, kind of just to get Denzel Washington back into his evil world again and then just disappear for the entire movie. And then there is one Denzel trying to help to lose weight so he can become a security guard. And whilst some of these characters come back in to the play at certain parts, a lot of it just feels like added back just to give the audience some sympathy for Denzel’s character when he’s doing some of those horrifically violent things he does. There is also like really random scene with Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo that feels like could just be removed from the movie entirely.
That being said, I did have a good time watching this movie because Denzel Washington as I said, sells every scene he’s in. He makes the violent fun to watch. He also sells the really serious moments. You’ll really buy that this altered gentleman can really kill all those people and do a really good job at it.
Overall, I did enjoy watching this movie because as a character I found him extremely compelling and of course Denzel made it endlessly watchable. That being said, you don’t really learn that much of his character and I was expecting to learn more about him but he’s a blank slate throughout the entire film from beginning to end so that did disappoint me.
Denzel was great, the action was fun although it’s basically like Saw combining with Home Alone, and it’s a little over the top. The story has a lot of hole in it, and there is a lot of added back but I still did enjoy watching this movie.

Director: Antoine Fuqua
Writers: Richard Wenk, Michael Sloan (television series)
Stars: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloe Grace Moretz
Duration: 132 min