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

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

This paint-by-numbers film, though powerful when you watch it, largely thanks to its lead actor, has no lasting emotional affect.

| Mar 7, 2017

The movie's all about reading, especially with a critical eye, but when you take too close a look at its disparate parts, they neither add up nor have anything constructive to teach.

| Jul 19, 2016

Noting the giant plot holes and laughing at the picture's overinflated self-importance become the closest thing it offers to entertainment. God, what a rotten movie this is.

| Jun 18, 2016

The director, Antoine Fuqua, relies on small details, which anchor the vigilante-as-saint myth in at least a minimal degree of reality.

| Sep 29, 2014

It's utter balderdash that could lose at least 30 minutes from its bloated running time, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the DIY violence struck a neanderthal nerve.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 28, 2014

"[Washington] projects the same kind of dignified gravitas whether he's playing Malcolm X or pulverising someone's skull with a Black & Decker drill."

| Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 28, 2014

The Equalizer is more amusingly juiced-up than a charabanc full of drunken Elvis impersonators.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 26, 2014

When was the last time you saw a lone hero stride toward the climactic killing ground in slow motion? Yesterday? An hour ago?

| Sep 26, 2014

Director Antoine Fuqua handles it all with jaded skill, and at inordinate length but the film's combination of silliness and extreme brutality is depressing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 26, 2014

It gets sillier as it goes along, but it's never not entertaining.

| Sep 26, 2014

There's a crude, appealing simplicity to such a single-minded action movie, but it's undone here by monotony.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 26, 2014

I could have done without the barbed-wire noose and glass-shard fight on shattered mirrors. But I couldn't have done without Washington, who, like Liam Neeson, has reached a new cruising altitude as a leading man.

| Sep 26, 2014

If The Equalizer is the hit it should be, it will give this veteran action star his very first movie franchise.

| Sep 26, 2014

This sort of visual jazziness lends a moderate amount of interest to a film that, in dramatic terms, remains both leaden and absurd.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 26, 2014

An effective thriller in a similar mould to Washington's films with the late Tony Scott.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 26, 2014

This is a kid's fantasy of how to be bigger and badder than anybody else. As for Washington, no doubt he now has his very own franchise.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 26, 2014

More and better Equalizers will be welcome, just to watch Denzel finding new ways of getting even.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 26, 2014

It scrapes together two gripping, closely observed acts before lobotomizing itself for an over-the-top final third that tips the needle from "Pleasure" to "Pleasure, Guilty, Shame on You!"

| Sep 26, 2014

If audiences and star are so inclined, it's easy to see this premise and this character - a tough, taciturn gent burdened with regret and a very special skill set - going into Roman numerals.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 26, 2014