Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills was the biggest boon to over-the-hill actors since the first bottle of Viagra came onto the market.
Ever since Neeson — a man who made his bones playing Oskar Schindler and Rob Roy — punched, shot, scowled, and threatened his way through every obstacle Eurotrash villains had to offer him in the surprise 2008 blockbuster “Taken,” Hollywood’s been looking towards the senior circuit for its action flicks.
The shocking resurgence of Neeson’s career provided a new archetype—steely, physically fit, full of new tricks, resourceful—for a swath of one-last-job, retired-secret-agent revitalization attempts (which were mostly unsuccessful).
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Kevin Costner got his. So did Pierce Brosnan. Christian Slater and Val Kilmer must be emailing their agents like crazy.
Denzel Washington’s “The Equalizer,” debuting Sept. 26, is an obvious byproduct of the gray-haired ass-kicker revival, and it runs miles around its fellow Old Country Buffet-chomping competitors—yes, even “Taken.”
Washington never gets mentioned with the Stallones and Schwarzeneggers and Willis-es as far as action stars go, and it seems to fit him — he’s a much better actor than the Planet Hollywood crowd.
It would be almost unthinkable to put Washington in “The Expendables,” yet his career’s been full of action movies bolstered by his natural ability to elevate any material he’s given to superior levels.
“The Bone Collector,” “Inside Man,” “Man on Fire,” “Safe House,” last year’s “2 Guns” alongside Boston’s Mark Wahlberg — movies that might have been completely forgettable if Washington’s natural charisma weren’t at their hearts.
When paired up with the right direction and script for an action film, he makes classics (“Crimson Tide”) and wins Oscars (“Training Day”).
Washington and “Training Day” director Antoine Fuqua joined forces again for “The Equalizer,” and the duo gave the movie a wonderfully violent, blood-spattered edge that’s been missing from the aforementioned crop of films.
Denzel Washington, right, and director Antoine Fuqua spoke between takes on the set of Columbia Pictures' “The Equalizer.”Scott Garfield
The theme is familiar, but Washington and Fuqua (left) are so invested in the idea that it works like a bloody charm.
Washington’s Robert McCall is a Boston-area home improvement-store worker, living a spartan, controlled lifestyle that borders on obsessive compulsive (he brings his own intricately-wrapped tea bags to the local diner, for example).
Of course, there’s something lurking in the heart of McCall — he’s a former CIA assassin, gone to live a quiet life after his beloved wife passed away.
Once his Chloe Grace Moretz-played friend (who happens to be a streetcorner hooker with a heart of gold and head full of dreams) is beaten to a pulp by Russian mobsters, the simple conventions go out the window.
McCall is out for vengeance, and my God, does he dispense it — cutting a red swath through layer after layer of Boston’s Russian mob (I had no idea it was so prevalent) with extreme prejudice.
There aren’t any quick cutaways from the violence here. None of the Russian mobsters (including main baddie Martin Csokas’s Teddy, the go-to guy for Eastern European thugs) simply clutch their chest and fall down in the street dead.
This is a bloody flick.
This film’s got “MacGruber”-levels of throat destruction, and a final shootout in McCall’s home improvement store which matches “Final Destination” in terms of its grim reaper-ing creativity- employing just about every sharpened tool in the aisles to slice through flesh and bone.
Simply put: “The Equalizer” earns its “R” rating.
As the wielder of the weapons, Washington’s McCall is just about indestructible in the movie. He’s practically a Marvel superhero by the end, an “unstoppable good” mixture of Jack Bauer, Anton Chigurh, and Frank Castle — and he sells it completely.
At 59, Washington’s still got the physicality and the aura to sell himself as an action hero, a lot more credibly than most of the muscle-bound young’ins trying to make it as modern superstars.
All of the other elements of an action flick are there, too, thanks to Fuqua’s proven skills (he’s responsible for the underrated “King Arthur” and “Olympus has Fallen,” too). The director does a fine, stylish job with this one.
The “Equalizer” script gives Washington plenty of room to establish some endearing character nuances and reinforce his pure badassery, while connecting with the audience.
Denzel Washington’s Robert McCall has it in for Teddy in Columbia Pictures' “The Equalizer.”Scott Garfield
Every kill brought hoots and hollers at the film’s screening and a nail gun throwback to a “Lethal Weapon 2” earned straight-out applause. Maybe the Boston location helped a little bit, although, frankly, the city’s obvious presence in the film is limited to a few long shots of the Zakim Bridge and a couple of shots of Denzel getting off the bus in Eastie.
Oh well. Not everything can be “The Departed.”
After walking home on those same Boston streets Denzel trod on, I kept thinking about why this movie (and “Taken,” and the other good senior-citizen-action films) connected so thoroughly.
In the audience, I heard someone relate to it — perhaps derisively — as a “dad” movie. Maybe it is. After all, I quickly recommended it to my my own father, via text, after the movie.
There’s something more to it, though. A big chunk of the crowds at these movies will be made up of Millenials (like me) who were introduced to the golden age of 1990s action flicks (“The Rock,” “Cliffhanger,” “Desperado,” “Face/Off,” etc.) by their fathers a couple of decades ago.
At that time, the dads were as young as the stars on screen (Nicolas Cage, Antonio Banderas, John Travolta); now...well, they still are, and that’s kind of cool, for both old and young alike. That’s a generational connection.
Call it early-onset action-film nostalgia, a yearning for simpler, straight-forward, non-CGI-ridden action flicks where the hero beats the crap out of the bad guys.
A dad movie? For sure. But, hey, as the saying goes...they do know best.
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