Review: The Equalizer

City Paper grade: B-

In following up Olympus Has Fallen, easily one of the most '80s movies of 2013, Antoine Fuqua pricks the decade's veins again, adapting The Equalizer to suit an audience with no frame of reference. Not that one's needed: The show, starring Edward Woodward as a hardass vigilante haunted by his CIA misgivings, was far from original then, and Fuqua wisely does little to tweak the formula now. Primed and predictable, Denzel Washington is a logical pick for role of Robert McCall, a trained killer who ditches his violent black-ops past for a humdrum job at a Lowe's-like home improvement chain. It's unfulfilling but safe work, and McCall seems to appreciate the friendships he forms with his coworkers. But when he catches a whiff of an innocent in serious trouble — callgirl Alina (Chloë Grace Moretz), a regular at the diner he frequents, keeps getting roughed up by her handlers — he slides back into scales-of-justice mode, and his decision mushroom-clouds into an all-out war pitting him against the Boston hub of the Russian mob. Most of the baddies in the original series were about as intimidating as the gangsters in the "Beat It" video, but Fuqua makes it a point to go edgy with the heavily armed help here, especially in the case of Teddy (Marton Csokas), a psychotic overseas fixer who proves to be the best and only match for McCall's abilities. The director's always handled action in the most satisfying and unsubtle manner possible, and Washington does well keeping pace — it's just that you already know the route from start to finish, and there's never any sense that our hero might fall behind.