The Equalizer (2014) Review

 The Equalizer (2014) 5.5/10

Hello everybody. Today’s movie review is going to be on the action movie The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington. I watched this movie back when it was first released in theaters and I’ve been meaning to watch it again for quite some time. The movie was first released on September 26, 2014 with the director being Antoine Fuqua. The movie is fundamentally average at best and is only here to be a popcorn flick. Somehow, it did pretty well at the box office (probably because of Denzel) and even spawned two sequels (which I doubt I’ll ever watch lol). Let’s begin.

Our story follows Robert McCall, who seems to live a very normal life, working at HomeMart (bootleg Home Depot). He keeps quiet about his personal life, wanting to live a peaceful life while also wanting to help everyone around him. He’s a man of solidarity, repetition, and he’s meticulous about the placement of certain things (mild OCD). Because of his routines, he’s made some very interesting friends. First are his co-workers at HomeMart. The movie mainly focuses on the big, hispanic fellow named Ralph. His goal is to get the security job at HomeMart. His mother owns a restaurant and makes fairly decent money. The second main friend is Alina, a sex worker that’s forced into prostitution by the local Russian mob. After a fateful night, Alina ends up in the hospital. Robert then makes it his job to rescue her. By doing this, the movie unfolds Robert’s secret past of being a man of focus, will, and skill in doing what no one else can. He’s basically a vigilante without the whole alter ego. His mission is to shut down the Russian mob for good so that he can go back to a life of peace while helping those affected by them in the process.

The story sounds very similar to John Wick, except without the whole underground assassin’s guild and a deep, personal vendetta by our main hero. This story works on its own fairly well, but I can’t help but see some correlations to John Wick. The story here isn’t deep by any means. It’s just about a guy doing what’s right and helping those in need by killing all the bad guys. The only characters I really liked were Robert and Alina. Don’t get me wrong, Ralph and the main antagonist Nicolai were decent characters, but I felt that Robert and Alina were better characters. I loved seeing how calculated Robert was with his killings and I liked seeing Alina turn from a prostitute to someone that was able to escape that line of work. Ralph’s development was cool too. I do wish the movie tried to develop him just a little more though. Overall, the story is average at best.

The action scenes are decent. Like I said, the movie is no John Wick, but it’s still an entertaining movie. The most notable sequence in the movie is when the film reveals Robert’s true nature when he went to barter for Alina’s life and ended up killing 5 guys in the span of 30 seconds. Other than this and the final fight at HomeMart, the movie’s action sequences are average as well.

Acting is great here. Denzel killed his role as Robert and the rest of the cast did well. Chloe Grace Moretz was a good Alina, Johnny Skourtis played Ralph well, and Martin Csokas played Nicolai very well.

Special effects were okay at best. When Robert blew up the gasoline tanker, it was very obvious that they used VFX for that. I wasn’t actually expecting to see Denzel walk away from an actual explosion, but this scene looked like it had late-PS2 graphics. Honestly, this is probably the worst part of the movie.

Overall, the movie is average at best. It’s entertaining, but easily could’ve been better. My main problem with the movie is that I feel like the director played it too safe. Because of this, the movie was held back from greatness. Story is average, action is average, music is average, special effects are average. The only relatively great thing about this movie was the acting, especially from Denzel. I can only recommend this movie as light entertainment. Nothing more. You can’t really take anything away from this movie except for one lesson that was taught in Moby Dick. Hopefully Equalizer 2 will be better than this. However idk if I’ll ever watch that.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.