Washington challenges Liam Neeson's senior action flick

Rating: 6/10 (6 October 2014)

A recent cinema-going of Denzel Washington's latest thriller directed by Antoine Fuqua, the man behind his Oscar-crowning good-cop-goes-bad turn in TRAINING DAY (2001, 8/10). But that is only a one-off bait for his Oscar consummation. As one of the most consistently bankable actor in Hollywood (at least in the domestic market), Washington's good-man card never fail his audience, bar his sortie in portraying an ambiguous character as a drunken pilot garners him another Oscar-nomination in Robert Zemeckis' FLIGHT (2012, 7/10). So this reunion is more or less commercial-oriented than an ambitious art-house attempt as Fuqua has established his status as the Hollywood go-to action journeyman after producing profitable outputs like SHOOTER (2007) and OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (2013).
The plot is a derivative individual heroism boosting fare, Washington is Robert McCall, a former government agent, now lives alone in Boston as an ordinary employee in the Home Mart hardware store. His quiet life is disrupted when he bonds with a young hooker Teri (Moretz), who is in the throes of a brutal Russian gangsters, after Teri being violently beaten by her pimp Slavi (Meunier), Robert decides to save her from the business, but instead, he swiftly kills him and his minions. Subsequently he determines to single-handedly takes on the entire gang, lead by the merciless enforcer Teddy (Csokas), as well as the big boss Pushin (Kulich) in Moscow.
It sounds Liam Neeson has some serious competition in the sub-genre of twilight badass actioner, but unlike Neeson's family man Bryan Mills in TAKEN franchise, Robert has no such liability, he is purely a righteous vigilante, a Black version of the Punisher, lynches low-life scumbags where legal law force fails to execute, indeed near the end, he even accepts request from Craiglist (a sequel is already being announced). Although it is impossible to swallow the concept of the protagonist can spectrally annihilate a whole mob by himself (with a little help from his amiable Hispanic friend) without sensing the off-putting whiff of propagandizing Hollywood's individualism, Fuqua manages to glaze the film with a Neo-noir patina in a steady pace to accentuate his aesthetic demanding and stylish cinematography; in lieu of resorting to ostentatious action stunts (surprisingly comforting there is no car-chasing sequences at all), Fuqua actually is patient enough to allow Robert's situation and his struggle being cogently formulated before he turns into an invincible executioner of justice and starts his fulfilling mission of killing.
It is an entertaining movie, sometimes too violent for common taste, but sharply hits the bulls- eye for its target audience. Its ultimate depot confrontation calls to mind a darker and more lethal upgrade of HOME ALONE gimmick, and the face-off between Robert and Teddy is unexpectedly anti-climatic. Washington is so comfy in his wheelhouse and can feasibly pull off the platonic friendship between him and Moretz without any May-December suggestion. The perpetually Russell Crowe dead ringer Marton Csokas finally gets a bigger part as the gentleman-looking but beast-inside killer, it is the best offer Hollywood can ever offer to him, it is also a timely wake-up call to reconsider his career options, maybe a romantic comedy for a change.