According to Chekhov’s oft-repeated dictum about the deals that storytellers make with their audiences if a pistol appears in the first act it has to be fired in the third. So if the great Russian playwright had lived long enough to savour the grisliness of The Equalizer he might’ve appreciated how well it fulfils the promise made in the early scenes which present its hero enjoying a working day in a big-box hardware store with a generous inventory of power tools that will soon come in handy.
Of course there’s plenty of other killing that has to get done before we reach the most gruesome stage of director Antoine Fuqua’s slick brutal but mostly compelling revamp. The original ’80s TV action series starred Wicker Man victim Edward Woodward as a former spy with a special fondness for helping folks threatened by scowling baddies. Denzel Washington’s stoic new version of the character McCall has an even more shadowy backstory and a far greater degree of lethality once a fresh set of villains interrupt the quiet life he’s adopted at the hardware store. It’s evidently wise to stay on McCall’s good side even if he’s too late to protect Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz) — a Russian prostitute he befriends at a late-night diner — from getting roughed up by her pimp and his tattooed cronies. After McCall exacts some payback in a scene that demonstrates Fuqua’s expertise with action choreography he incurs the wrath of Teddy (Marton Csokas) a heavy for the Russian mafia who may be more than equal to this McCall’s skill set as a heavy-duty badass.
Deploying an unusually languorous style in between the intensifying episodes of mayhem Fuqua largely succeeds at adding a little more richness and texture to material that may have been better suited to Jason Statham. Then again Washington’s been here before both in his rougher outings with the late Tony Scott like Man on Fire and in his previous pairing with Fuqua in Training Day. Compared with his showier Oscar-winning turn as an unabashedly crooked cop in the latter hit Washington’s performance here emphasizes McCall’s cool and collected manner while allowing for enough moments of warmth to make him seem like something other than a sociopath who kills without compunction. He may not ever be mistaken for one of Chekhov’s characters but he’s far more fleshed out than Woodward’s original and a sturdy centre for Fuqua’s punchy piece of pulp.
THE EQUALIZER directed by Antoine Fuqua starring Denzel Washington and Marton Csokas opens Friday September 26.
