Entertainment

The Addictive Action Thriller on HBO Max That Makes John Wick Seem Small

Published

on

In 2014, the action genre was upended with the release of John Wick. Chad Stahelski and David Leitch‘s hard-hitting thriller was a success on multiple levels: it reignited Keanu Reeves‘s career, made Stahelski and Leitch among the most sought-after filmmakers in the industry, and inspired a wealth of action movies, including Nobody and Bullet Train. There’s another major action thriller that debuted in 2014, and it not only matches but exceeds the Wick franchise in intensity. What movie is this? None other than The Equalizer. The Denzel Washington-led action thriller and its two sequels are currently available to stream on HBO Max, meaning that action fans can find out for themselves what makes The Equalizer so great.

Based on the 1985 television series of the same name, The Equalizer stars Denzel Washington as Robert McCall, a former Marine who’s trying to live a normal life by working at a hardware store. However, when his young friend Alina (Chloë Grace Moretz) is hospitalized by the men she works for, McCall brutally slaughters them all and starts to utilize his military skills to bring justice to the guilty. What seems like a simple premise takes on surprising depth, thanks to Washington’s performance and the expert direction of Antoine Fuqua.

Advertisement

‘The Equalizer’ Trilogy Shifts Genres With Each Installment

Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) pulls a gun in ‘The Equalizer’ (2014)
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing

Perhaps the most interesting element of The Equalizer trilogy is how each installment feels like it belongs in a different genre. The first Equalizer feels like an elevated vigilante thriller, slowly peeling back the layers of McCall’s past and revealing his deep commitment to justice. In contrast, The Equalizer 2 is more of a revenge movie, as McCall seeks retribution against his former colleague, David York (Pedro Pascal), for killing his lifelong friend Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo). It’s with The Equalizer 3 that things take a major shift, as McCall’s dismantling of an Italian crime enterprise plays out like a horror movie, with foes dispatched with brutal, bloody efficiency. It’s a sharp contrast to that movie’s’s more peaceful ending, which Fuqua said was meant to bring McCall’s journey full circle.

“It’s a nice send-off that he’s found a place. Because the first one is about finding purpose. He was trying to find a purpose, and he found it. The second one is about dealing with the past—his wife dying, Susan getting murdered, his friends betraying him—and he had to deal with his past. This one is about finding a place in life that you feel could be home and some peace.”

This journey also resonates thanks to Washington’s performance as McCall. Not only does he make McCall a quiet yet steady presence throughout all three Equalizer movies, but he also came up with the backstory that McCall has a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. This element leads to the most iconic element of The Equalizer trilogy, where McCall often times himself on how long it takes to dispatch his opponents. Not only does this lead to some supremely badass action sequences, but it’s also a great way of showcasing McCall’s considerable skills.













Advertisement



















































Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz
Which Action Hero Would Be
Your Perfect Partner?

Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Advertisement

Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.

🎖️Rambo

🍸James Bond

🏺Indiana Jones

🔧John McClane

Advertisement

🎭Ethan Hunt

Advertisement

01

You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner?
The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.





Advertisement

02

You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel?
How you get there is half the mission.





Advertisement

03

You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do?
This is when you find out what someone is really made of.





Advertisement

04

The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest?
Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.





Advertisement

05

How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission?
Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.





Advertisement

06

Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them?
The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.





Advertisement

07

Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do?
Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.





Advertisement

08

What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace?
A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.





Advertisement

09

Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with?
No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.





Advertisement

10

It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now?
The last question is the most honest one.





Advertisement
Your Partner Has Been Assigned
Your Perfect Partner Is…

Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.

Rambo

Advertisement

Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.

James Bond

Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.

Advertisement

Indiana Jones

Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.

Advertisement

John McClane

Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.

Ethan Hunt

Advertisement

Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.

Advertisement

The Director of ‘The Equalizer’ and Denzel Washington Reteamed for a Remake of a Classic Western

Anyone who watches The Equalizer and loves it will be happy to know that Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua would reteam for another project: a remake of the iconic western, The Magnificent Seven. Unlike other remakes that are content to merely contrast on nostalgia, Fuqua shakes things up with the casting as the titular seven is a multiracial mix of characters, including Washington’s hardened bounty hunter Sam Chisholm, Martin Sensmeier as young Comanche warrior Red Harvest, and Lee Byung-hun as knife fighter Billy Rocks. The Magnificent Seven also serves as a reunion for Washington and Ethan Hawke, whom Fuqua directed in the crime classic Training Day.

Though John Wick might have taken the action world by storm, The Equalizer trilogy definitely deserves the same recognition. It proved that Denzel Washington can play an action star as well as any other role, and kept viewers on their toes by constantly shifting between genres.

Advertisement


Advertisement


Release Date

September 24, 2014

Advertisement

Runtime

132 minutes

Writers
Advertisement

Richard Wenk, Richard Lindheim, Michael Sloan

Producers

Alex Siskin, Denzel Washington, Ezra Swerdlow, Jason Blumenthal, Mace Neufeld, Michael Sloan, Richard Wenk, Steve Tisch, Todd Black, Tony Eldridge, Ben Waisbren

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement


Advertisement

Source link

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Cancel reply

Trending

Exit mobile version