The movie wants us to think he’s a hero, as evidenced by a cringingly bad moment when McCall’s prostitute friend Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz) asks him about another book he’s reading and he responds, “It’s a book about a knight in shining armor in a world when knights don’t exist anymore.” But it’s hard to root for a guy who lets a teenage - possibly underage - girl continue to be a prostitute until she’s beat up not once, but TWICE. It’s also either profoundly confused or deeply misguided about whether Washington’s character, Robert McCall, is an anti-hero or not. The script by Richard Wenk is as good a place to start as any, as it asks us to believe that having a middle-aged character prominently reference Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” is subtle characterization. This movie is so anger-inducing it’s difficult to nail down where the root of its issues lies. The result is a movie that’s blatantly, proudly misogynistic and sociopathic, a disgrace to everyone involved and to the intelligence of the poor moviegoers who pay to see it. Except that the few things that “Taken” did well (what a world we live in when you can hold that movie up as an exemplar), “The Equalizer” not only doesn’t do well, but gets totally wrong. Inspired by the likes of “Taken” and other popular flicks about middle-aged tough guys dealing out righteous vengeance on evildoers, here’s Denzel Washington as a former CIA agent dishing out the pain to a bunch of generic Eastern Bloc toughs who’ve beat up his prostitute friend. You can see the genesis of a half-decent movie here. “The Equalizer” is one of the latter, unquestionably the low point for movies so far in 2014. 7 after the Super Bowl on CBS.If you made a greatest hits list of bad moviemaking trends, you’d end up with something like “The Equalizer.” There are movies that are badly made but more or less inoffensive, and then there are movies that are actively harmful, that promote bad ideas and do actual damage to your brain while you watch them. The questions are whether Hollywood has somewhat greedily issued that call once too often, and how many of those post-football viewers come back for mor When such trouble comes, you go to “The Equalizer,” naturally. (The program carries a dedication to the original show’s co-creator, Richard Lindheim, who died in January.) “Who do you go to if you can’t go to the cops?” the premiere’s damsel in distress asks, encapsulating the underlying premise in a single sentence. Dana Owens, among the executive producers), it’s an unpretentious exercise that makes the most of its New York setting, a bit like the former CBS hour “Person of Interest.” There’s even an NYPD detective (Tory Kittles) wondering who this mysterious vigilante might be. Marlowe and Terri Edda Miller (joined by Queen Latifah, a.k.a. Like the CW’s recent revival of another old CBS title, “Walker, Texas Ranger,” the show emphasizes family a life apart from crimefighting in a way the original didn’t – a more character-driven sign of the times, transparently seeking to humanize its inherently-likable star beyond just serving as a robotic dispenser of justice.ĭeveloped by former “Castle” producers Andrew W. OK, so it’s not quite grandma’s “The Equalizer,” although the first show was probably most memorable for its synthesized theme. They include Bishop (Chris Noth), now running a private-security firm, and a husband-and-wife team that consists of a sharpshooter (Liza Lapira) and hacker (Adam Goldberg), both inordinately handy skills in a pinch. Robert McCall has become Latifah’s Robyn McCall, a former CIA agent quietly raising her teenage daughter (Laya DeLeon Hayes) with help from her live-in aunt (Lorraine Toussaint).Ĭonveniently stumbling on a young woman in jeopardy – she witnessed a murder by some very bad people – McCall quickly demonstrates her special skills, before calling on some old friends and colleagues for assistance. If they’re in the market for another procedural with a likable lead and an inordinately good cast for this sort of by-the-numbers endeavor, they just might. The premiere does a nice job of laying out all the ingredients, hoping at least some of that audience will come back for seconds. But the character isn’t all that’s changed, as the show adopts more of a team concept than the original’s loner, even if the basic template – a pretty fun one – still involves a shadowy savior of those in need.ĬBS was happy enough with the concept, ordered as a series without the usual pilot process, to give it a coveted introduction after the Super Bowl, which should ensure a fair amount of sampling. “The Equalizer’s” evolution continues, from that stately old British gent in the 1980s to a couple of Denzel Washington movies to Queen Latifah in a new CBS series.
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