Denzel Washington has been in a lot of Good Movies - this is not one of them

Rating: 3/10 (21 October 2014)

Denzel Washington has been in a lot of good movies. Unfortunately, this is not one of them. Having appreciated the mid 1980's series upon which this movie is loosely based; and liking Denzel Washington as an actor, I went to this movie feeling that the movie had a better than fair chance of being a good action thriller.
The movie starts promisingly as we see Robert McCall's (Denzel's) efforts to positively impact those with whom he works and socializes. Unfortunately, the movie goes downhill from there. While Good guys killing bunches of villains and being unrealistically lucky is standard fare for mindless action films, the initial 20 minutes plus of this film tried so hard to convince us that this was not going to be such a film that the transition to being a mindless action flick is jarring and disappointing.
Sadly, once Robert McCall begins his killing spree it truly does become a mindless action film that is largely without suspense or fun. The lack of fun comes from Washington's character who despite very token almost meaningless efforts to give the bad guys a chance to do the right thing, clearly enjoys figuring out all sorts of ways to kill them.
Of course only bad guys use guns, but highly trained ex CIA operatives/assassins like Robert McCall eschew guns. So ex CIA operative Robert McCall does the competent professional thing by leaving guns on the ground throughout movie, instead choosing to kill the villains using a wide variety of methods that in real life would have put himself and the people he is supposed to be protecting at far greater risk.
As described above, the situations Robert puts himself and the risky way in which he engages the bad guys completely contradicts the idea that he truly is this methodical experienced professional. That he manages to come out ahead could only have been accomplished by script writers with no regard for realism or the viewer's sense of credulity.
The situations were so stupid that even I watched the film I found myself angry with the scriptwriters for being so obviously lazy.
Frustratingly, Washington's character does not even do a good job protecting the innocent, putting them at risk even after being directly warned they will be put at risk by his actions.
In the end this was a poorly made film not because it featured the hero doing ridiculously unrealistic things, but because the movie worked hard at the beginning to tell us this was not going to be mindless action flick, but than went on to deliver a mindless action flick that really was no fun at all.