Fantasy diversion for the oppressed & downtrodden.

Rating: 3/10 (10 February 2015)

This is just another damn action movie, but it could have been more.
Denzel Washington's humble home-hardware clerk character is way too nice to be believed — tho that aspect's far less improbable than his spectacular killing prowess once he's sufficiently riled by injustice. The movie quickly devolves into a pointless cataloging of innovative techniques for killing nasty people using whatever comes to hand — especially how to achieve lethal results wielding nothing more than common hardware superstore implements. Wow, entertaining.
Is it too much to expect maybe a shade of moral ambiguity anywhere here, a bit more back-story?
Yet look at the time wasted having him fly to Washington to see his former supervisor just to establish that a) he was once some sort of agent who b) formerly did something-or-other for c) some unspecified branch of the secret government. I mean, does that really add anything we hadn't already figured out for ourselves? OK, we do learn he once loved somebody-or-other (I think they may even have mentioned a name), that she somehow died & that he for some reason faked his own death. How relevant is that?
And what about his quirk of timing everything he does? He times how long it takes him to get ready to leave his apartment?? Interesting character trait, I admit, but am I the only one left wondering how he got that way? C'mon, don't be so lazy, flesh it out a bit, willya?
Too-good-to-be-true heroes with mysterious backgrounds & two-dimensional bad guys are boring. Gimme a break. This white-hat-black-hat crap is old hat. It went out with Roy Rogers!
Just one more Hollywood fantasy diversion, a feel-good movie for the oppressed & downtrodden — & that's a rapidly expanding demographic nowadays, isn't it? But hey, it could have been more.