The Equalizer is about as subtle as a pneumatic stapler shot to the temple. But who wants subtlety when one can bask in the glory of Denzel obliterating remorseless degenerates left and right?

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 25, 2023

Washington shines, playing McCall as a clean and orderly man, whose OCD doesn't prevent him from getting his hands dirty with the blood and grime of Boston's most rotten. He is a killing machine that almost never fails. Full review in Spanish.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 17, 2023

Denzel’s immense gravitas and quiet power elevate this beyond a run-of-the-mill violent action thriller.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 1, 2023

The film would collapse under its own preposterousness, not to mention its absurdly bloated running time (b-movies should not be 130 minutes long, under any circumstance) had it not had, at its centre, one of the best leading men in the business.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 31, 2023

The film is worth seeing to watch Denzel deliver his trademark slow burn gaze.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 14, 2022

The subtle shades and suggestions are handsomely successful at preserving the lead character's mystique and the film's higher plane of purpose.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 14, 2022

The Equalizer has the unique displeasure of being a total bore and yet completely over-the-top.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 25, 2022

The laughs might be tongue in cheek but you get the feeling that's not what the filmmakers were trying to achieve.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 26, 2021

It's a good movie and Denzel is, as always, charismatic and interesting, but if "the old man gotta be the old man," then The Equalizer gotta be more of an action movie to be completely satisfying.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 1, 2021

Washington is interesting enough to sustain the 130-minute runtime, even though the finale is far too lengthy and enormously over-the-top.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 4, 2020

A lazy and overly padded bore.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Sep 28, 2020

The Equalizer is dark and brutally violent...Fuqua adds his stylistic flair to the proceedings, but it has a more restrained feel than some of his other action outings.

| Jul 17, 2020

While there's nothing particularly interesting on a surface level, a subtext of strangeness runs below the action, and there's such an insane, action genre one-upsmanship going on that it's difficult not to be engage and even harder to look away.

| Original Score: B | Jul 7, 2020

As a guy who grew up in the '80s, I am in the target audience for this film. I only wish, like my theoretical Hollywood execs, I had the means to stop it from happening.

| Jan 8, 2020

It is pure studio fodder, suffering from some miscasting, a bloated running time, and a flat lined screenplay.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 5, 2019

Fuqua's style seems consistent, although he uses more video and editing resources, the strength of the narrative raises the impact of the action scenes. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 15, 2019

With greater care taken over the haphazard pacing and poor script, The Equalizer might have been a fun night out. Instead it begs the question of when Washington will be given a movie worth his talents.

| Original Score: 1/5 | May 25, 2019

The Equalizer is good enough popcorn entertainment, made classier by the presence of Washington.

| Mar 2, 2019

It's a film that starts in a nasty place and gets progressively worse throughout its 137-minute running time. This project is way below the talents of people like Washington and Fuqua.

| Jan 25, 2019

The Equalizer suffers from a bloated and banal script that does little to elevate the simple premise of its source material to something worthy of the big screen.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Nov 1, 2018