The Equalizer - Danny's Review

I did my first day's work since June yesterday, so as a reward today I went along to the new Denzel at 10am. There weren't many of us there, mostly single middle aged men, and an elderly couple who left early.

Denzel, along with Liam Neeson, is the new breed of middle-aged action hero. Unlike Arnie and Stallone (and Seagal) who rely on brute strength (and lightning reflexes) these guys use the unique skills they learned ages ago, and were hoping not to have to use again. But they've been pushed too far, so reluctantly destroy everyone in their path.

In The Equalizer Denzel plays an ordinary guy working at a hardware megastore, with a secret past. It's a bit like Viggo Mortensen in A History of Violence, but whereas Viggo actually is fairly normal Denzel's character is a bit weird. He's excessively precise, lives like a hermit, never sleeps, and carefully wraps up a single tea bag in a napkin to take to his favourite late night diner, where they give him hot water and he reads a really old looking book.

It's in the Diner he meets another creature of the night, Russian mini-hooker Chloë Grace Moretz, who is intrigued by the very obviously symbolic books Denzel is reading. The Old Man and The Sea where the old man "faces his greatest challenge late in his life", Don Quixote, about a man who "wanted to be a protective knight in an age where there were no knights", and right at the end The Invisible Man.

Denzel is curiously affected by her plight, and snaps when she gets beaten up one too many times. There's a good scene when he confronts the Russian pimps. He decides to let things lie and opens the door to leave, but then pauses, pushes the door closed and goes back inside... From then on we know he's some sort of elite killer, and it's a case of him working his way up the organisation outsmarting and outkilling them.

The film is pretty lean, and pretty much everyone Denzel talks to in the first half, when he is being normal, later returns when he is being a badass. There's one woman who Denzel greets near the start "Hi Julie, how are you?" "Better now" (for having seen Denzel). Later she gets a Diamond ring stolen in a routine robbery unconnected to the main plot. Denzel of course gets it back, but by now it's well established how effective Denzel is, so all we need to see is the shorthand of her rediscovering the ring, and Denzel cleaning off a bloodied sledgehammer and popping it back on the shelf. Presumably it's still fit to be sold to another customer.

Denzel meets his nemesis, a steely evil Russian fixer (Martin Csokas) who brings loads of goons with him for Denzel to kill. Denzel deals with him, in an epic hardware finale with lots of good props. Then after you think it's finished there's a little epilogue when he goes to Russia to kill "the head of the snake". The final scene shows Denzel answering an uninformative email "Can you help?" simply by writing "Yes". He's found his inner peace, and has become some sort of lethal agony aunt.