By Allie Pino ’15

Every few years, Hollywood treats audiences to a quality example of a revenge-style flick with an Oscar-caliber actor. “The Equalizer,” starring Denzel Washington, is firmly rooted in this tradition, delivering exactly what its ad campaign has promised.

The camera travels through the apartment of Robert McCall (Washington) as he goes about his evening routine in the film’s opening moments. He’s one of those guys who keeps to himself, and it isn’t hard to figure out why. He has a dark history, except we don’t know what that history is yet. Every night, after working at the local Home Mart, he goes to his usual diner where he spots his only friend, the local hooker. But McCall sees something different in Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz) than most people do. He sees her potential to become the singer she has always dreamed of becoming.

McCall is distraught when he learns that Teri was beaten by her pimp, a local Russian crime boss. To McCall’s credit, he offers a fair deal of ten grand to win Teri’s freedom. But the boss and his half dozen thugs just laugh at McCall. Boy, was that a mistake. This is the first moment when we see what McCall is capable of. With unimaginable speed, he kills everyone in the room. What McCall doesn’t know is that he just wiped out the Russian Mafia’s entire East Coast team.

The Russian Mafia’s CEO dispatches a trained psychopath named Teddy (Marton Csokas) to protect investments in America’s organized crime and make an example of McCall. This naturally means there’s going to be a monster showdown. The Russian Mafia’s biggest, baddest men versus one man, who they don’t know once had a career as a well-armed shadowy government agent.

Director Antoine Fuqua is at his best when teasing out the tensions between doing what’s right and what’s legal. There’s something appealing about a scenario where a man has the ability to right wrongs without having to worry about the strictures of the law.

There are few actors who radiate the sort of calm authority Washington does—the dry smile and arched eyebrow that suggests he knows he’s always in charge, regardless of how many thugs are in the room. “The Equalizer” is a bit long at 128 minutes, but who’s really going to complain about getting to hang out with Denzel Washington for longer than two hours?