The Man Movie Encyclopedia – The Equalizer

Greetings, all.

Alright, this week we’re back to MME Classic, with a return to action movies. This week we have one of my all time favorites of the last few years, a movie I’m beside myself with fucking excitement over for the sequel, The Equalizer.

We start off with an intro into the life of Robert, a middle aged cat with a seemingly normal, if not dull, life. He works at what is basically a Home Depot, rides the bus, reads old books, and has a few weird ticks. Such as timing everything and setting things places. He makes friends with a girl who’s a reluctant hooker, as they both hangout late at night at the same diner.

She isn’t there a few nights, and he gets word that she’d been beaten so bad she ended up in the hospital. He shows up, and gets some info from one of her friends that she ended up hitting one of the pimp’s back, and he did this as a way to teach the others. So, Robert heads to the club where this cat, Slavi, hangs. He offers him $9800 for Elieena’s freedom. He thinks over Robert’s proposal and has a better one; he goes and fucks off. Well, Robert is keen to negotiating, you never take the first offer. So, he counter offers with death. The first dude gets it via a fucking shot glass to the eyeball! Then dudes are getting stabbed up, be it with knives or corkscrews, and finally Slavi dies from a gunshot to the throat.

The Russians call in a big hitter, as everyone believes this was a hit from a fellow gang. Elsewhere, Robert’s friend, Ralphie who he helped lose weight so he could apply for the security position, calls in one day and quits. Robert shows up to Ralphie’s mom’s restaurant, and finds out there was a fire, so Robbie had to quit in order to help out. Meanwhile, the Russian, who has a cop on the payroll, has the cop take him to speak with the head of the Irish gang, to find out what’s going on. The Irish cat insults the Russian duder, and the Russian guy responds by hitting him in the face 31 times. Yeah, I counted.
Later, at Ralphie’s mom’s restaurant, we see two cops extorting her for protection money, letting it be known they set the fire. Out back, Rob is there, shows that he has them on camera extorting folk, then proceeds to whoop the hell out of them before he tells them that they’re gonna return the money and never do it again, less his footage makes it on the news. They promptly do, all is well.
At work a few days later, a gunman robs one of the cashiers and takes her ring, which belonged to her mother. The next day, we see Rob cleaning a sledgehammer he borrowed, with her ring returned to register she works. However, it isn’t all good news, as the Russian sent to clean things figures out who Robert is, and pays him a visit. They attempt to nab him in the diner, but he takes out their dude with a book. He snaps the dude’s neck with a freaking BOOK. Man, does he kill people with ANYTHING conventional? I wanna be that deadly.

Bad Guy: OK, there he is, Caliber Winfield. Let’s go get him.
Bad Guy 2:No freaking way, man.
Bad Guy 1: Why not?!
Bad Guy 2: Dude is sitting near a coaster! I’m not taking any chances with him sitting next to a coaster, man.

They chase him back to his apartment, only he’s staked out across the street, watching their moves. He soon heads to a friend’s house, from his old days as what I can only assume is the CIA or something. He gets the lowdown on who he killed, who they work for, and what to expect. She basically gives him the go ahead to do what he needs to do.
First, he heads over to the house where the crooked cop lives, and traps him in his own car with a hose coming from the exhaust pipe inside the car, slowly killing him until he gives Rob the info he wants. They end up at a meat packing plant, which is also a base of operations for Pushkin’s entire enterprise. With literally millions and millions of dollars. Possibly even billions. Lemme tell you how that’d go if I were Robert..

Cop: Caliber, we appreciate all that you’ve done here. We checked the books, says there was 22 pallets worth of money, but we only counted 20. Any idea where the other 2 went?
Caliber: [who is walking around like a star fish because his shirt and pants are packed so tight with money] Not a clue. Moths. Probably.

The cop had a nice stash with money, and tons of info on Pushkin and his operation. McCall takes a look at it, figures out a few things, then mails it to an FBI agent. He then promptly blows up their cargo ship. Naturally, this displeases some folk. So, Nikolai and his gang get together and hold the people at Home Depot hostage, in exchange for McCall. He doesn’t show up where they want him to be, instead he heads to Home Depot and rescues his peeps before fucking everyone else up. He legit goes full homicidal Home Alone. Killing folks with barbwire, tree pruning devices, all sorts of sweet shit. He dispatches all of the baddies, and then heads to Moscow to take off the head of the snake.
After all is said and done, Eliena catches up and tells him how well she’s doing now, and how at the hospital there was an envelope with almost $10,000 and a ticket out of town, for a fresh start. We then see him at the cafe, putting out an ad on Craigslist, looking for glory holes. Er, my bad, he’s instead putting out an ad saying if there’s anyone who needs help, he can do so.

MAN MOVIE TALLY:
1-Liners: 0
Guys Beat Up: 5
Guys Killed: 11
Swear Words: 108
Boobies: 0
Explosions: 1
Chase: 11
Broken Bones: 1
Fight/Shoot-Out At Motel?: No
Guy Get Girl? Nods
Guy Smoke?: No

MAN FACTS:
Released on February 2nd, 2010, with a budget of $52 million dollars. After all was said and done, worldwide, it brought in almost $53 million.

The Equalizer scored the best out of any R rated Sony film in test screenings.

Elineea was originally an older character, but the director was so impressed with Chloe he made the part younger.

The film was in developmental hell since 2005, with Russel Crowe attached to play McCall at one point.

C’MON BENNETT, LET’S PARTY!:
All I can really say is: FUCK. YEAH. The Equalizer is absolutely fantastic. A brilliant action movie that harkens back to the 80s, where one dude has to beat the ass of bad guys a plenty. Denzel is an incredible action star, and honestly did himself a HUGE diservice by not starring in any until now. You basically believe McCall is a complete bad-ass, and as calm as he is deadly. Beautiful shit. Love it.
****3/4 Head-Butts out of 5

Any questions, comments, drunk-ramblings, feel free to send them my way, I always dig hearing from you, the beautiful people.
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