The name Denzel Washington is one of those names that is capable to take any one to the movies, without even knowing what we have to expect from the film. An actor with enough reputation, he already made major roles throughout his career, has won two Oscars and like it or not "a name" greatly influences the expectation that we have about what we want to see. One of Denzel Washington's Oscars he won with the film Training Day made exactly with the same director of this The Equalizer, Antoine Fuqua. What happens sometimes is that good names can not save a film. Unfortunately The Equalizer is an example of that.
Robert has a past that no one knows. He works in a department store of building materials in Boston, apparently has a very quiet life and suffers from insomnia. To try to occupy his time, he reads and many times during the night he goes to a coffee shop opened 24 hours a day. As a frequent visitor of the place, there he knows Teri, a teenage prostitute and the two end up creating a special bond. Robert quickly realizes that Teri belongs to some kind of human trafficking mafia and ends up getting involved with the Russian Mafia bringing to him many problems that he could not predict.
The biggest problem of the story is that we have seen this type of film over and over again, with the same clichés and quite ordinary dialogues. The character development is not done properly leaving many things left unexplained, things that may be important to the audience.
At the beginning of the film we think that we're about to watch a film of a deep, dark atmosphere that will respect all the characters feelings, but ultimately this is no more than a mere action film where the important scenes are all the beating scenes (which by the way are very well choreographed) but with lots of failures along the plot and wasting time with scenes that turn out to be irrelevant, rushing many that could have been better explored. It would have been ideal to combine the two things, a good plot and lots of action but the film chooses the path only in the entertainment style of "One Man Army".
Denzel Washington gives a very solid performance, normally an actor is that despite doing a lot this kind of roles lately, knows how to make them decently. I think he is starting to follow Liam Neeson's path in role choices and that is a shame. I kinda feel sorry for both because they are good actors and I would love to see them do those striking roles that we had seen them do before. The talented and young actress Chloë Grace Moretz is also very good as expected but she only has very little screen time, and her character is the one that will lead to the entire development of the main plot of the film, although is not given proper development and importance to her.
The Equalizer turns out to be a disappointment for those who could wait for something less commercial and deeper, but I know that will surely appeal to many especially to all the lovers of action flicks with big fight scenes.
