The greatest action film in a very long time

Rating: 10/10 (19 July 2015)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) was an ex CIA operative with a lethal set of skills, who quietly left the agency and settled in to a quiet life working for a Home Department store. But when he strikes up a friendship with Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), a young girl aspiring to be a musician, but entrapped to some vicious gangsters, he finds himself forced to employ the skills from his past life once again, setting him on a collision course with Teddy (Marton Csokas), the gangster's brutally efficient enforcer.
Adapting an old TV show from the '60s seems to be the norm these days, which on the surface doesn't offer much in the way of surprise or even excitement in The Equalizer's way. But left in the right hands for a change, everything's come off a treat, and the result is a solid, effective action adventure, that evokes great memories from the good old days when action was at it's height.
Over ten years after Training Day, Denzel and director Antoine Fuqua have re-united and re-created that hard-hitting, superb magic once again, only this time with Washington in the hero role. And how finely he fits it, too, perfectly fitting the character and suiting his physical requirements down to a tee. He is matched by Csokas as the bad guy, the best in a long while, eerily menacing, methodical and suddenly shocking with his unassuming moments of enraged violence. Unlike many modern directors, Fuqua is not brash, and allows his story to take it's time and progress at it's own pace, with a proper beginning, middle and end, stretching at over two hours, but never weary or dull, and culminating with one of the best action sequences in a long while, with a Home Department store being turned in to a battleground, with a selection of DIY equipment not really being used for their intended purpose.
The names involved should have got my senses buzzing more than they already did, but thankfully I was not disappointed. This is just the best action film in years, brutally violent, intelligently written, well directed and polished with a slick veneer. It's good that it's taken so long to getting round to writing the review, as it's given me more time to rave about it as much as I should, and give it the justice it deserves. *****