Equal Eyes Equalise Equal Lies

Rating: 7/10 (11 January 2015)

I regard this film nicely. However, there are many points to this movie that made me feel like, Man, that wasn't equal at all. Why call it the equalizer? This question of identity invoked me to comment and review this artistic representation of ex-killers working at home depots.
Denzel Washington did a superb job representing an intellectual ex- killer working an ordinary and satisfying job at what seemed to be a franchise hardware store. I, myself, would have preferred glasses Denzel in this particular film but I realize that if we were to take him as what he was, he would seem a little bit like a serial killer (with the glasses and all.) Not that he wasn't anyway, because he serially killed (a lot of guys (pretty ruthlessly too.)) Marton Csokas also did a fine job representing a cool slick Moriarty cross with the demon dude from Supernatural. His character was a bit all over the place, and often there were times when the things you would expect his character to do, didn't happen. For example, in the home scene where Teddy visits McCall at his house. If their respective characters were truly themselves, then some things would've definitely have gone down during that interaction. It left me feeling like they could've ended the film then and there but decided to drag it out via a few thousand deaths and "justice" scenes (also for the final home depot scene.) Which, as an action film, I kind of expected. Chloe Moretz was an OKAY Teri. She didn't get much screen time. They had such a thick friendship for him to go through all that jazz but they only had the occasion of meeting up (in the film) three times. Which was kind of weird if you think about it. But it was good that the focus wasn't just on a girl. It seems as though in this film, women and men are equalized. The other characters didn't really seem very important to the plot. Just extras dying.
The cinematography was decent. I mean, they got the actions parts pretty good. But the slow scenes felt more slow than they should have been. I understand this is build up technique for tension, but honestly, for tensions scenes i personally would go for a straight one shot rather than flick over multiple camera shots to show many perspectives of one person being choked to death (for example.) The first action scene was brilliant and I wished there was more of that (equalisation) but the remaining action scenes and sort-of action scenes left a lot to be desired. The final action sequence definitely dragged out for too long, and it was not really known how many people Nikolai had entered the building with and that made me feel quite an imbalance with what was going on. Especially since in the previous scenes, they illustrated each character and their deaths (if they died.) The final scene where Nikolai versus McCall was way too short. This whole rivalry the film built up between these two equalizers felt like it was for nothing as McCall obviously out equalized his adversary. Extremely quickly too, unfortunately. Left me feeling incomplete, especially after the scene where McCall directly threats Nikolai in the restaurant.
The plot was pretty unrealistic. The idea behind it was decent I guess with the whole moral obligations, follow your heart served with the side of justice combo meal deal type of thing. And i suppose it was fair that McCall did get roughed up once or twice during his altercations. But to take down an entire enterprise and then immediately travel to Russia to shut the whole thing down officially? These guys must have been trained in COD or something. Really. Teri's character was a nice trigger, but the plot focused far too much time trying to create the relationship between her and McCall.
The script was pretty nice, made the dialog flow very well. Straight to the point with a touch of melodrama during some certain monologues. The conversations didn't seemed forced. But the whole special prostitute meets special agent kind of thing was kind of fake feeling. Like in a book from the 1970s or something. Like Pretty Woman never existed or something. Since when do you make friends like that in diners nowadays. And I assume this was 2014 as he was using a smart phone to take pictures and he was using a laptop to hack cameras.
PLOT HOLES. Why the hell did he have two houses? did he know this thang was gonna happen? How do you rig a surveillance system in your house with the wages from home depot? How did he create an entirely new identification for himself when according to his CIA friend, he was dead? Wouldn't the CIA have found out? Wouldn't his friend have been breaking protocol? Would the CIA suspect something, what with all the killings going on and suddenly a retired CIA asks to see some files relating to the recent killings? Is the CIA that chill? Why did the tanker company have no security? Surely he didn't as he is a sentimental character who believes and peace and justice. Why did the Russian mobsters decide to kill McCall ruthlessly at the end when at the beginning they spent so much time trying to make it look like a clean death? What, rich Russian mobsters cant afford silencers? They couldn't have stationed the sniper from the other location outside of home depot? They couldn't afford smoke bombs or the like, even though they had night vision, couldn't they afford thermal scopes? He could have easily been taken out so many times.
All in all, great film. I enjoyed it. I laughed. 7/10. Would watch again, provided I forgot what the film entailed. Which isn't going to be a problem, two weeks from now.