tek's rating:

The Equalizer (R)
IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; Sony Pictures; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; iTunes; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube

This came out in 2014, but I didn't see it until 2021. It's vaguely based on the 1980s TV series of the same name, but it reminded me more of the 2004 movie Man on Fire, which similarly starred Denzel Washington as a badass with a past he's trying to forget, but is forced back into because of a girl. (Though at least this time he has his life much more together.) In that movie the girl was a kidnapped little kid with a wealthy father, while in this movie the girl was a teenage prostitute with whom he's casually acquainted, named Alina (Chloe Grace Moretz). When she gets beaten up by her pimp, Denzel's character, Robert McCall, kills him and some of his henchmen, after unsuccessfully trying to buy Alina's freedom. But they all worked for a guy in Russia, who sends a fixer named Nikolai Itchenko to find whoever killed them and take him out. Of course this forces McCall to kill a ton more bad guys. Meanwhile, he helps some other people in other ways, tangential to the main storyline.

There's not much more to say about it. As action movies go, I guess it was alright, but it wasn't great. I'm not sure if I liked it more, less, or about the same as "Man on Fire", a movie that I found fairly forgettable, and probably will feel the same about this one. ("Man on Fire" is in my "meh" section, but it probably wouldn't have been if I had written a review when I first saw it, so that doesn't mean I liked it less than this one.) Anyway, there's a sequel to "The Equalizer" from 2018, but I probably won't see that.


badass index