The Equalizer (2014)

I have seen this before, or at least most of it (probably channel surfing). But I just watched the whole thing last night, and I have to say that I'm pretty impressed.

OK, just so you know:this has nothing to do with it being set in Boston. I probably talk too much about Boston here... I don't know, whatever, who cares. But, this is just about the movie.

First of all, I was really impressed with how they showed Denzel's character, Robert, to be a really good guy. Plenty of action type movies imply that the hero is... at least a better human being than the villain, and they usually stick in a scene or two to make him sympathetic, make us like him and root for him. But in The Equalizer, they really get into the nitty gritty of HOW he is a good guy, specifically. They show details.

Like, at one point there is a robbery at the place he works. It's some kind of "big box" hardware and construction supplies store, pretty much like a Home Depot. A robber confronts this woman Jenny, at the cash register, and steals a fair amount of the money she had, and also a ring she was wearing that had belonged to her mother. Robert (Denzel) almost stops the robbery, but at the last second he notices some small children walking by, and chooses to let the robbery proceed uncontested, so the kids won't get shot in whatever melee might ensue. So, that shows that he's a conscientious good guy, right there. But then he goes further, tracks the robber down, off-camera, and he gets Jenny's ring back for her! What a guy. They leave it up to us to imagine what he does to the robber, but it is made pretty clear that whatever the details, what he did was quite fatal.

Even bigger than that, though, is the interest he takes in his buddy and co-worker, Ralphie, an overweight guy who wants to be a security guard. Robert keeps friendly but serious pressure on the guy to stick to a diet to lose weight, and just generally goes the extra mile in helping him to meet his goals. He helps him a LOT, and helps Ralphie's mom, too, when she gets set up in a scam by some crooked cops. They just show what a good friend he is, and how he really has the best interests of everyone around him at heart. They even show him participating in a baseball or softball game between his workplace and some other store's team, just to show how he tries to be part of his community. I thought that was really cool.

But he isn't just working to improve his community, and the lives of his friends. He also finds time for self-improvement. He is working his way through a list of the one hundred greatest books ever written (according to... who knows). He is doing this out of respect for his former (late?) wife, who was working her way through the same list.

Sometimes he sits in a local coffeehouse or diner (not sure) at night, reading his books, and having a cup of tea. Over time, he strikes up a friendship with a troubled-looking girl who often sits near him, who is obviously a... um... an indentured sex worker?!? She is obviously being forced to be a hooker, by parties (at first) unknown. Robert eventually sees who her pimp is, and starts getting a sense of what is going on.

Stop reading now if you don't want spoilers.

The meat of the movie, the plot that everything else was just leading up to, is that he decides to get involved and help the girl out, when he sees that she has been physically abused by the pimp. He goes t the pimp's... um... office? The pimp hangs out in a room in a Russian restaurant with his henchmen, running his business. Robert shows up, and seriously fucks up everyone there, leaving no survivors.

Soon we learn that the pimp was just a lower level scumbag in the larger crminal empire of a Russian mafia guy named Pushkin. Pushkin sends a scary guy who handles difficult sitations, and... well, it takes some time, and things get a bit tense now and then, but MAN does Robert ever fuck up Pushkin's operation. He takes care of the scary guy, he blows up an oil tanker or two belonging to Pushkin, he brings down a major money laundering place where Pushkin's people were laundering what appeared to be hundreds of millions in cash, he alerts journalists (or possibly some kind of lawyer?) to the network of corrupt US official enabling Pushkin's business practices, and eventually he even goes to Moscow and kills Pushkin.

This was all started just to keep one girl safe. Just a girl he talked to a few times in a little local coffeehouse/diner place. It's just such a great story to tell, that this guy completely levels a massive, major international criminal enterprise comparable to S.P.E.C.T.R.E., the Umbrella Corporation, or Omni Consumer Products, basically just to help a girl he barely knows. How cool is that?!?

I left out some important details, so you might still be able to enjoy the movie if you haven't seen it yet, but I just had to talk about what a great character Robert is, and what a great job Denzel does.

What a great character. I bet there were some viewers out there who were inspired by him, and tried to make themselves better people because they watched this movie. Bravo! Two thumbs up from tommix.