All things being equal

I remember when times were simpler; back in the heady days of hideous fashion in the mid-80s and the progressive sounds of Linkin Park permeating the 90s. The new millennium has been interesting at very least, if not mostly notable for the terrifying plummets from grace of some of the best my formative years had to offer. Now, I'm not talking about Yew Tree and the foul cesspool of degradation and filth slowly rotting away at the core of so-called light entertainment, nor the ethically corrupt and morally diseased parasites gnawing at the innards of the Hollywood hills nor even the hypocrisy slathered oligarchy atop their ivory towers toying with people's livelihoods. Although that's all well and good, it may come as a shock to you fine, upstanding citizens, bursting with civic pride and fresh from shining your moral compasses, that none of those things is why we're here. Honestly, I'm still smarting from the hideous and soul-rending debacle that was Killing Gunther. I'm personally offended that Arnie would even put his name to it. There is an upside though.

While Arnie may have slung his lot in with the straight-to-DVD crowd and is now nuzzling closely to Nick Cage's outraged googly eyes and Seagal's pot belly, there are some actors out there unwilling to sully their names with that tripe, but instead forge forward to deliver us action movies steeped in the tradition of those glory years and not made by some half-assed chancer with access to a film crew and a bank manager who actually believed the prospective cast list when he was trying to secure the loan. Denzel Washington, please take a bow.

The Equalizer 2 is heading to big, shiny screens reasonably soon and having caught the quite excellent trailer it occurred to me that I had somehow bypassed the first one. How this happened I'm not sure. Perhaps I was expecting the type of gritty drama that made Training Day so compelling but wasn't in the mood or perhaps I was sceptical of Hollywood remaking an eighties cop drama series (starring one of the most English of English actors Edward Woodward) that I'm old enough to remember being on TV but not old enough to have watched. It may have something to do with it being released at the same time as John Wick (which I also didn't get round to seeing straight away) so I can only assume I was really busy during 2014.

John Wick is an interesting comparison, because they share a very specific strand of DNA. Wick is flashier, much more indicative of this decades action movies; hyper-real fight scenes, choreographed at lightning pace and hammered together to produce the cinematic equivalent of being electrocuted in the face by rhino who knows Kung-Fu and really, really loves dogs. By comparison, The Equaliser is a much slower burn; there's a precision to the main character, Robert, which runs through everything he does. John Wick is a whirling Dervish of Ju-Jitsu and firearms that leaves you breathless and reeling at the adrenal gland; The Equaliser is the T-800 pursuing you through a factory and a slew of horrible sequels and simply will not stop. 

The beauty of both movies is that they are the progeny of all those action movies I loved growing up, but particularly The Equalizer. Plot wise, things are kept very simple and it's the character that takes over. Denzel has walked in these shoes before; I'm not ashamed to admit that I got some dust in my eye at the end of Man on Fire when they make the exchange, because that movie is so brilliantly understated and beautifully acted that when the final realisation of what's happened and what is about to happens hits, it really hits. So it goes here; it may be a fairly straight forward revenge tale, but you're rooting for Robert because ultimately he is the quintessential good guy, searching for peace from the terrible things he had to do for his country, not avenging for love or money or anything other than it's the right thing to do. Picking on the Russian mob is probably not the wisest move, especially when noted "Eastern European" (he's actually from New Zealand apparently) mentalist Marton Csokas is your bad guy, but it's OK because Denzel, in case you weren't aware, is a badass.

Much is made of Liam Neeson taking on ex-military hard men roles and while he is good at them (if a little type-cast nowadays sadly) Denzel is rarely wheeled out for memes, despite very obviously having a particular set of skills of his own. There's something effortless about their very first reveal; a room full of tattooed Russians and a stopwatch end up leaving you in no doubt of Robert’s abilities despite his mild mannered appearance and light-hearted outlook. It’s the small details that set him apart though; the borderline obsessive compulsive neatness, the fastidious nature of his dietary advice, the palpable sense of disappointment on his face when he dispatches the gang way outside the time he estimated and the matter-of-fact manner he pulls off a Predator 2 moment fixing a wound in a bathroom lends a weight to the hero that you've seen a thousand other scripts struggle to nail. So many of his non-lethal interactions are so completely awkward; the switch, when it flips, is just so much more illuminating because of it. I’m also not entirely sure I remember seeing him blink, but that might be details.

All in all it's a great movie and I’m kicking myself for not getting round to it sooner. I can't speak to the accuracy of its translation from small 80s screen to big 2014 screen, but frankly I don't think you ought to care. It goes to show that you don’t have to dredge up parodic lines from your best movies in a horrendous turd or low-ball it with overly self-referential things like The Expendables in order to make a decent action movie in 2018. Don’t get me wrong; I'm all for a knowing nod here or there, but sometimes I just want to see a dude get offed with a corkscrew. I am only human after all.