With remakes and reboots dominating the Hollywood landscape at the moment, The Equalizer has found a new and interesting way to recreate the source material.
It's hardly surprising that filmmakers raised on TV series in the 1980s are now turning them into movies. Some of these end up as faithful adaptations (Miami Vice, The Dukes of Hazzard), while others take a more knowingly pastiche approach (Charlie's Angels, 21 Jump Street). What we haven't seen before is a film that only takes the barest hint of an idea to make a very different kind of movie. But that's exactly what's happened with The Equalizer.
Robert McCall is played by Denzel Washington in this new film
The television series ran for four seasons from 1985 to 1989, starring British actor Edward Woodward as retired intelligence officer Robert McCall, who quietly goes about helping people who are in trouble. The show's theme centres on McCall's efforts to atone for his violent past by doing good in his golden years, mainly working as an investigator or bodyguard who takes on drug dealers, murderers, rapists and kidnappers.
More: Watch the trailer for The Equalizer
By contrast, Robert McCall is played in this new film by Denzel Washington. He's also a retired agent, but his predilection for violence is just a bit more pronounced as he ruthlessly tortures and kills everyone in his path as he fights to help a teenage prostitute (Chloe Grace Moretz) escape from her cruel pimp. In the process, McCall takes down the Russian mob and cleans up Boston's corrupt police department.
More: Read our review for The Equalizer
Yes, this film has a lot more in common with director Antoine Fuqua's over-serious thrillers like Olympus Has Fallen, Brooklyn's Finest, Shooter and of course Training Day, for which Washington won the 2001 Best Actor Oscar. But while the TV show's violence felt regretfully necessary, Fuqua's films offer a strikingly different vision, as brutality becomes a catharsis leading to some sort of redemption. In other words, aside from a couple of similarities, this isn't The Equalizer at all.
After winning Tony Awards on Broadway, Denzel Washington and Viola Davis reteam for a film...
Troy Moxson works hard as a garbage collector to support his family. He has two...
Director Antoine Fuqua brings his usual fascination with violence to this remake of the iconic...
After the murder of her husband, a widow and resident of the town of Rose...
Little more than a paint-by-numbers action thriller, it's anyone's guess why the filmmakers have bothered...
Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Olympus Has Fallen) talks about what makes The Equalizer (Denzel...
Robert McCall has a modest job at a hardware store in Boston where he longs...
What looks like a rather standard buddy action comedy is elevated by a smarter-than-normal script,...
Marcus Stigman and Bobby Trench have, for the last year, been working together as part...
With another deeply committed performance, Washington brings badly needed complexity to what is otherwise a...
When airplane pilot Whit makes an extraordinary landing following an engine failure which saves the...
With a cool Cape Town setting and constant sweaty, kinetic violence, this entire film plays...
Matt Weston is a young CIA agent who, for the past year, has been bored...