Decent but formulaic action

Rating: 7/10 (18 January 2015)

Washington plays McCall, a guy who works at a home improvement store. At night he goes to a diner and ritualistically drinks tea while reading a book. Also at the diner every night is a young Russian prostitute who waits there to be picked up by her rich clients. They occasionally chat about the books he's reading. His wife started a project to read a list of 100 books but she died before she could complete it. Now he's repeating the project. One night, the girl is bruised. They walk together and her pimp shows up and slaps her around some more. Another night the girl doesn't show up at the diner. McCall finds out she got a beating and is hospitalized. He goes to the hospital and talks to one of the girl's colleagues who tells him how the girls are treated and that they are risking their lives.
McCall decides to visit the pimp and after a whole lot of nothing finally explodes and kills all the mobsters there, pretty much single-handedly, that is, often with just one hand. That gets the attention of the main Russian mobster who sends a cleaner named Teddy to take care of things. Teddy is well-mannered, well-dressed, soft-spoken but vicious. After much investigation he finds out that McCall was behind the killings and starts tracking him and even pays him a visit.
McCall, still living his slow life, thinks about things, he visits a woman who's some higher up in government. She tells him it's OK if he does what he has to do. Now McCall decides to act. He goes after corrupt cops on the mobster's payroll, destroys their entire operation, and meets Terry leading to the eventual final confrontation in the dark and with water sprinklers on of course, when Teddy decides to take McCalls's coworkers hostage.
I'm not familiar with the TV series but this movie is a fairly average and formulaic action movie. You have the reluctant hero with near superpowers, who is forced to make justice when put in a corner. Personally, I don't think Washington makes that convincing of an action hero. He's empathetic enough so I see him taking on the standard Morgan Freeman role at some point. The story is very good though, even though things go pretty much as expected. The movie is about 30-40 minutes too long. For a movie that focuses so much on its lead, we learn next to nothing about McCall. And as much as this director, and others, do their best to glorify Washington--one just has to count the number of slow-motion shots of Washington--it's Marton Csokas who steals the show as the calm and brutal Teddy. The movie also ends on a laughable and improbable situation as McCall travels to Moscow. But I'm in favor of movies who advocate the reading of books, so I'll give it one more point for that.