Film Review - The Equalizer (2014)

Based off the 1980s TV series of the same name (recently seen in a memorable scene in the Wolf of Wall Street) this film version stars Denzel Washington in the role made famous by Edward Woodward who meets a young prostitute (Chloe Moretz from Kick Ass) and when she is beaten by her bosses he decides to use his particular set of skills to hunt down those responsible.

I was keen to see this film as it looked like a fun action picture and I also like Denzel Washington as both an actor and an action hero so I thought I'll give this a go.

How wrong I was as this was the stupidest film I've seen all year and also one of the worst I've seen this year for a few reasons:

- The first is that the film is no fun to watch whatsoever, the first half of the film is deathly dull and after about 30 minutes I just sat there going "Okay can we just get to the killing now" as that is pretty much what I came to see.

- Which happens to lead into my next problem and that is the film is simply too long, at best this film should have been 90-99 minutes but instead its 2 and a quarter hours and boy oh boy do I wish Denzel's character had edited this film as a film of this type simply has no right to be that long.

- And last but also my principal problem is that the film's action scenes are just ridicolous to watch as Denzel's character comes across as a magician whose line would be "Abra Kadabra, Ala-ka-Zam, watch as I make everything go KABLAMO!!" and then in one scene the bad guys ask "Who are you" to which I thought "I'm Batman" and then there's the climax (and I'm not joking) which takes place in a home hardware store that plays out like the Terminator goes to Bunnings and at that point I literally just started laughing my head off and not in that "Oh this is good" way but in that "Oh Come on" way and I was very glad when the film was over as the ads for Bunnings should now be saying:

"Bunnings Warehouse. Lowest Bodycount Guaranteed."

And so that was the Equalizer, avoid it at all costs and rent Taken with Liam Neeson instead, .5 out of 5.