By Chris Shea, staff writer
EQUALIZER? MORE LIKE A WASTE OF MY TIME, AM I RIGHT LADIES?
When one hears that a movie is going to have Denzel Washington in it, one would tend to think that it’s going to be a great piece of cinema. This was not the case with the film The Equalizer.
Robert McCall (Washington) is a former black-ops/CIA/FBI guy (they never fully explain his backstory) who is retired and living in Boston, Mass. When he’s not working at a generic version of Home Depot, he’s reading books at 2 a.m. in a diner where the whole action plot starts to take place. McCall eventually starts to talk to this Russian woman of the night and after a series of events, McCall winds up fighting the Russian Mafia.
I won’t go into too much detail because the film didn’t have that many details. There wasn’t much character development, some scenes went a little too over the top, and they had to keep reminding viewers where the film was taking place by having Boston Red Sox stuff appearing constantly because you know…Boston. It also took him way too long to start “equalizing” bad guys, which is just a fancy term for killing.
Now don’t get me wrong, the special effects and action sequences were amaz- ing, no matter how cliché they were (like McCall not looking at an explosion as he walks away from it). So the movie was never not entertaining. Expect to see a sequel (sadly) as The Equalizer managed to gross more than $159 million on a $55 million budget and had its sequel green lighted in Feb. of 2014.