Don’t worry if you don’t remember “The Equalizer,” the late ’80s TV series on which Denzel Washington’s latest film is based.
The movie borrows little from the show except a few names and a basic setup that is intended mostly as a vehicle for righteous violence.
As in the TV show, a mysterious loner named Robert McCall (Mr. Washington) stalks city streets, taking down thugs and bad guys in an effort to help good citizens put-upon by the crime and corruption of urban life.
He’s got a past, a sense of justice, and a way with knives and guns.
The movie changes the city setting from New York to Boston, perhaps out of deference to the Big Apple’s massive drop in street crime over the last two and a half decades.
But aside from the inclusion of a few cops with Irish accents, Boston doesn’t have much a presence or personality.
That’s in keeping with the rest of the film. It’s an appropriately generic urban setting for this thoroughly generic revenge thriller and its bloody but persistently generic action thrills.
The film’s pacing is pleasantly measured, especially for the first half hour or so, which finds McCall, who works days at a big-box home repair store, visiting a local diner to read books in the evening.
The novels he brings with him (“The Old Man and the Sea,” “The Invisible Man”) offer a trove of easy, shallow metaphors, as well as a jumping off point for conversations with Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), a young prostitute who eventually runs into trouble with her bosses.
Eventually, after Teri ends up in the hospital, McCall gets involved, first by wiping out a room full of Russian mobsters, and then by going through the escalating ranks of muscle sent in to respond to his opening salvo.
It all builds to an extended ultraviolent showdown in McCall’s home-repair store, featuring a crew of elite but disposable mercenaries distinguishable only by their elaborate facial hair.
The senior villain, a high-level fixer named Teddy, is played with tightly wound Euro-trash menace by Marton Csokas; he’s all tailored suits and slick, gelled hair.
He gets more lines and screen time than the mercs with the funny mustaches, but there’s nothing to him besides his shiny outfits, his accent and his sneer.
David Harbour makes a somewhat bigger impression as Masters, a slimy, corrupt cop who ends up leading McCall through the city’s underworld, although he was better used as a weirdo-killer in last week’s “A Walk Among the Tombstones.”
That leaves Mr. Washington to carry the movie, and he does a typically fine job despite the underwhelming material.
At 59 years old, Mr. Washington isn’t as dynamic an action hero as many of his younger, spryer contemporaries, but he brings a sense of wisdom and gravitas that few can match (only Liam Neeson comes to mind). Even when he’s not doing much, he’s still riveting to watch.
Director Antoine Fuqua, who helmed Mr. Washington’s Oscar-winning turn in “Training Day,” continues to prove himself a competent, methodical director with a knack for well-acted, pulpy action scenarios.
Mr. Fuqua isn’t a particularly flashy filmmaker (and it’s easy to imagine a more kinetic version of this movie by Mr. Washington’s frequent, recently departed collaborator Tony Scott), but his slower, more purposeful direction is something of a relief after a summer of spastic, sugar-addled blockbusters.
In the end, aside from always reliable Mr. Washington, there’s not much about the movie that stands out. Like the TV series it was based on, after a few years, you probably won’t remember this one either.
★★1/2
TITLE: “The Equalizer”
CREDITS: Directed by Antoine Fuqua; screenplay by Richard Wenk
RATING: R for bloody violence, language, sexual situations
RUNNING TIME: 131 minutes
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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