6.5/10

Rating: 6/10 (15 October 2014)

Forget originality, forget emotional depth, forget interesting storytelling and you will have the same fun I had in the theater with "The Equalizer". It's pretty obvious that I wasn't going in expecting an Oscar contender, I just wanted to see Denzel be badass. Even though the film doesn't really succeed one hundred percent as a good action flick it still has many enjoyable aspects.
Firstly, foremost and obviously: Denzel. There's really nothing that I can say that has yet to be said on him, he is just awesome, charismatic and badass. He has the ability of gluing you to the screen and without him the movie wouldn't exist. The other highlight in the cast is definitely Marton Csokas. Again nor Robert McCall nor Teddy have any actual depth as hero or villain, but the actors playing them really do a great job and contribute hugely to the fun factor of the movie. There is lots of unexpected violence that firstly caught me by surprise, but as the film went on it made it all the more exaggerated and enjoyable. Finally the action scenes are all very well staged, even though they don't do anything new they have a great vibe. Most of all the final climactic scene was actually pretty suspenseful and carried on for just the right time.
On whole "The Equalizer" was all of the above, but it really fell flat in doing anything to make it a superior action movie. It is filled with clichés, a couple of useless characters and should have been cut by at least ten minutes. Moreover the visual style of the movie offers some good, well staged action scenes, but for the rest doesn't feel shot that well. There were sometimes where I blinked at the screen because of poor lighting. The closure of the movie is totally silly and cheesy. Finally Denzel's character is never, ever in danger and as much as it was fun looking at him being a badass it didn't add up to a cool hero: the stakes were never there.
The film is just another action movie with very few brains, seeing it in the theater is worth the experience, but I don't think I will ever watch this again.