Review of The Equalizer (2014) by Harry W — 24 Feb 2015

Re-teaming Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua after their legendary pairing on Academy Award winner Training Day, The Equalizer was never a film I would consider ignoring.

The Equalizer has a story that viewers have all seen many times before. I expected as much, but I found the problem to be that it took a very long time for Antoine Fuqua to tell it. The first 30 minutes of the film are surprisingly long. This is probably because I've heard the same story many times and expected The Equalizer to be more fast in its movement like Training Day was. The two films are bound to end up compared by fans of Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua, and it is difficult to imagine many people concluding that Training Day is inferior as The Equalizer is thoroughly slow and derivative. For a Denzel Washington film, the simplicity of the story as a revenge tale ensures that it borrows heavily from his earlier film Man on Fire, only without a developed relationship between the hero and the damsel in distress. The story develops eventually, but not until after it incurs the negative result of a slow pace and an extensive period of running time. I have never seen the original television series The Equalizer before and therefore cannot compare it to the film adaptation, but it is certainly not a film that comes close to the quality of Training Day. I must say that I really wanted to like the film and tried hard to ensure that I did, but in the end I could not deny that even a powerful pair like Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua are not above human error.

The Equalizer is a film with a very thin narrative to it, it is familiar and it is dull. It is not hard to predict what is going to come next in the narrative, but waiting for it to actually happen becomes frustrating due to the slow pace of the film. For a film with a thin narrative, The Equalizer takes forever to get anywhere which is incredibly frustrating. Due to the familiarity of the story, finding yourself sucked into the narrative and embracing the characters is not as easy as you'd think. Trying to stretch such a thin concept over the course of a 132 minute period of running time is not the best idea, but establishing its pace as being relentlessly slow is not something that viewers should be facvourable of. The slow pace of the film is also damaged by the fact that it has a distinctive lack of action. In trying to be a legitimate thriller, The Equalizer goes at a fairly slow pace and uses what turns out to be little violence along the way. Thanks to Antoine Fuqua's direction it is stylish and very atmospheric, but it lacks the energy of his earlier works and so The Equalizer is a mind numbing feature at times. It is enjoyable in parts, but as a whole it is rudimentary, overlong, slow and has a thin premise which is miked too much wihout enough action to justify it.

The action is filmed and edited stylishly, but it is conentionally staged. It is mainly composed of well-orchestrated clsoe close combat which works as a system of showing off the abilities of the protagonist in the story. I enjoyed them, but they are really not that special. They follow essentially the same style as many of the fight scenes in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes but with no narrative to support it. And even then, there is far too few of them to really make any sort of impact. The Equalizer is far more of a dramatic thriller than an action film, but it fails to make a significant impression in either areas which really makes it a big misfire as a whole.

Stil, Antoine Fuqua remains a stylish director. Ensuring that the scenery is ideal, the colour palette is grim and the cinematography is atmospheric, The Equalizer at least succeeds as an exercise in stylish cinema. The imagery in the fimlm helped to compensate for much of the narrative flaws at times, even though the film was still unable to transcend them. The musical score was also tense.

And of course, Denzel Washington delivers a strong leading performance.

Remaining as much of an effective lead as ever, Denzel Washington manaages to deliver a tense leading effort in The Equalizer. Though it is a character he is very familiar with, Denzel Washington has no difficulty returning to the role of a shaken man with a list of morals and a sense of determination to fight for justice. His effort is an easily intense one, and though it doesn't demand anything from him he still manages to deliver justice in the role. Denzel Washington is consistently on edge in The Equalizer, just waiting for the right moment to strike. When he does, it is impressive. He once again proves his worth as a leading man and an action hero in The Equalizer. So his performance is one of the best parts of the film simply because he keeps the viewers consistently engaged.

Chloe Grace Moretz also does a decent job. Though her screentime is way more severly limited than you might have expected, when she on screen she manages to capture the damaged nature of her young character by taking a really nihilistic approach to her material without falling into shallow territory. She shares as strong screenplay with Denzel Washington which is unfortunately underutilized in The Equalizer.

But despite the powerful leading performance of Denzel Washington and a strong sense of style brough to the film by the directorial work of Antoine Fuqua, The Equalizer is an unfortunate misfire which borrows from countless other films and fails to pay them back with a shortage of action, an extremely slow pace and a general lack of originality plaguing it all the way.