The Equalizer - Seen it all before

Okay, maybe I’m missing something, or I’ve become simply too cynical to appreciate ‘The Equaliser.’ If you check out the reviews you’ll notice that they’re overwhelmingly positive.  I’m not going to slate the film, but I certainly wouldn’t say that it’s as good as the majority of people seem to think.

In fact, I can’t really think of anything negative to say about it, but then I also can’t think of anything positive to say about it either.  We have Denzil Washington as the star.  Naturally, he’s a great performer and puts in a decent enough show as a man with a dark past who has lethal ways of getting revenge on those who set out to harm the innocent.  The film is shot nicely stylish.  Every now and again you’ll get a fast paced montage of images with highlight the director’s flare.  The action scenes are nice (if violent, naturally) and everyone gets what’s coming to them.  And there’s a decent enough amount of other stars, ala Chloe Grace Moretz and Bill Pullman to make this a little more than just a mindless B-movie action flick.

Yes, for all the plus points, I found the film pretty average.  Bad guys hurt the innocent.  Once man stands up to them.  Despite everything that’s good about it, I just felt that I’ve seen it all before and, no matter how flashy and violent the action scenes were, I still found it was one of those films where you could do the ironing while you were watching it, or nip out for a drink and you wouldn’t have missed that much.

Perhaps the most average thing about the film is the bad-guy.  How often have we seen Russian gangs bullying their way around America?  The lead bad-guy is just a bad-guy.  He’s completely generic.  Yes, he’s evil and will kill anyone who gets in his way, but aren’t all villains?  Seriously, he could have been replaced by any actor and the film wouldn’t have changed much.

So, I’ll end by saying that most people seem to like it.  So maybe you should take their word over mine.  I’m clearly in the minority here.  But I didn’t hate it.  I just didn’t see anything that I hadn’t already seen a hundred times before.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights