So “Denzel whoop-ass” is such a huge draw that people don’t care if the 2014 version of it — Antoine Fuqua‘s The Equalizer — is maybe one-third as good as Tony Scott‘s Man on Fire, if that? It’s going to make $35 million this weekend, and that’s…somewhat depressing. Then again I’m no one to talk. I knew The Equalizer might suck (Fuqua is a low-rider) but like the schmuck that I am and always will be I went to see it anyway during the Toronto Film Festival. What’s the verdict from the HE gang? Surely most readers agree with me that it goes downhill fast after the first big violent bone-snap (i.e., Denzel vs. five or six Russian mafiosos).
From my 9.7 review: “The Equalizer starts out coolly and unpretentiously and in no big hurry for the action to start. Which is okay with me. I was impressed by the fact that Tony Scott‘s Man on Fire (’04), still the high-water mark for Denzel whoop-ass, delayed the inciting incident (i.e., the kidnapping of Dakota Fanning) until the 45-minute mark. That was radical (inciting incidents usually occur between the 20 and 25-minute mark) and, for me, exciting. So The Equalizer‘s somewhat similar approach felt right.
“The film is basically about Denzel bringing pain and death to a slew of bad guys. But I really need the action to be semi-plausible and that means Denzel has to be at least a little bit vulnerable, and I really don’t want the bad guys to just be heavily-armed, standard-issue muscle-bound jerkoffs, glaring and snarling and wearing the same beards and shaved heads and dressed in the usual black bad-guy apparel (black suits, black T-shirts, slick black boots).