Film review: The Equalizer

The Equalizer is tiresome and doesn't live up to its intention of being a classy update of the TV show.

Denzel Washington and Chloe Grace Moretz in The Equaliser. Scott Garfield / Sony Pictures

The Equalizer

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Starring: Denzel Washington, Chloë Grace Moretz

Two stars

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If you were lucky enough to catch Denzel Washington in A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway, you saw the hugely charismatic actor portray, in an iconic role, the full complexity of a human being: strengths and weaknesses, attributes and flaws, durability and vulnerability. All topped off, of course, with that boyish Washington charm.

Alas, Washington doesn't always choose big-screen roles similarly worthy of his unique talent. This is especially true of The Equalizer, a mediocre thriller that tries to establish the 59-year-old actor as a middle-aged action hero, à la Liam Neeson. Here, we get to see Washington kill a lot of people. Yawn. OK, he does it in somewhat inventive ways. Still: yawn.

The Equalizer isn't a terrible movie, as action sagas go. It just doesn't come close to living up to what it aspires to be, which is a smart, classy update of the 1980s TV series of the same name about an ex-government agent who spent his retirement as a sort of ultra-violent avenging angel.

Changes have been made. On TV, Robert McCall (Edward Woodward) was a debonair middle-aged Briton in a trench coat, cruising the streets of New York in a black Jaguar. Here, there is no trench coat, no Jaguar, no New York.

The director Antoine Fuqua and the writer Richard Wenk have moved the action to Boston, and Washington’s McCall is a blue-collar type. A widower with few possessions, he spends his days working at the Home Mart and his nights reading and drinking tea at a diner.

It’s here that McCall befriends a young prostitute (Chloë Grace Moretz). When she falls foul of nasty Russian mobsters, straight from central casting, McCall’s vigilante instincts emerge.

Now, if seeing a corkscrew lodged in a bloody neck inspires you to applaud gleefully, you’ll probably like this movie. If not, then, like me, you may feel your initial ­affection for this character wavering ever so slightly as the body count rises.

It turns out the Russian pimps are only the tip of the iceberg in an operation managed by a Moscow crime lord who sends an emissary to investigate who killed his men.

The Equalizer is tiresome and formulaic. An overly long final confrontation is suspenseless and that's because the filmmakers haven't bothered to give McCall any vulnerability whatsoever. And that's boring.

You could do worse than watch Washington kick butt for two hours – but it would be a lot more interesting to watch him struggle while doing it.

The Equalizer is out in cinemas now