If an actor’s career can be said to obey the same laws that govern physics, then Denzel Washington’s turn in the third big-screen Equalizer reboot (the Threequalizer!) represents the corresponding opposite reaction to his last role as the Lord Macbeth for Joel Coen. Washington brought a frailty and introspection to the Thane of Cawdor, played as a greying lion-runt with insecurities giving way to a corrosive bloodlust. As Robert McCall, the erstwhile marine and intelligence-agency ghost cleaning up the streets in his retirement, Washington gets the chance to refute the idea that the savage passage of years must eat away at a man. Yoked with that same weight of pre-geriatric regret, he’s now able to conquer it and win at life, his willingness to kill making him a hero rather than tragic figure.
With a superhuman physical fitness allowing him to dominate toughs a third of his age, a tactical acumen creating the illusion that he knows everything at all times, and a teasy little rapport with the decades-younger waitress at his favorite cafe, he projects the picture of capability. Age is just a number, in this case dwarfed by his body count. As McCall spends a few scenes hobbling about with a cane following an injury sustained in the field, the anxiety of getting old nips at this movie’s heels, but its pipe dream of overpowered obsolescence responds with AK-47 fire.
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