Review of The Equalizer (2014) by Paul A — 05 Jan 2016

Some of you will remember the old TV series starring Edward Woodward. If you don't then don't worry, if you do, forget it. This film has nothing to do with that, or at least so little as makes no difference. They have basically just used the name as it already has a high public awareness.

Chloe Grace Mortez plays a prostitute, but as she was only 16 when they filmed it her part is understandably small as she obviously can't get up to any prostitute related activity on screen, which makes you wonder what the point of her even being in the film was? Her scenes are so short as to effectively be meaningless, so she brings nothing to the table. I'm sure it was a nice pay cheque for her, but they probably should have cast someone older as they had originally intended to, and fleshed the part out a lot more. As it was, I didn't really care what happened to her character as I knew so little about her. If they had fleshed the character out more then we would have cared more.

Denzel Washington is good, but not great, playing a man who displays little or no emotion he can phone his performance in with his eyes shut, which makes you wonder why they didn't opt for an action star instead. They should have cast Jason Statham and had more action (not that I'm a fan of Statham's as I'm not, but you get the point I am trying to make). The corrupt cops angle wasn't really explored, and didn't really serve any purpose in the film. The final showdown scene was good and the film as a whole has some good "Ewww" gory moments, but not enough.

If you watch the DVD, make sure you watch the Home Mart advert in the extras as it's funny. In fact, if the person who had made that had made the film it probably have been a lot more interesting.

Would I recommend it, yes, but I'd warn you it's slow, so be prepared to spend parts of the film checking Facebook and putting the kettle on while you wait for them to get to the next action sequence.