Absurd but insightful

Make no mistake about it, The Equalizer (an action movie, in an action franchise featuring Denzel Washington) is a relatively stupid movie. It’s tonally asynchronous, in that in one scene Denzel is motivating a slovenly co-worker to make better eating choices and get in shape. In another he’s playing softball. But in another he’s killing a guy with a drill in the movie’s version of Home Depot. It’s like Disney meets Grindhouse.

But if I ever need someone to motivate me to get in shape, or motivate me to stop selling drugs and double-down on my art education (as was the case in The Equalizer 2), I want Denzel doing the motivating. Similarly, if I’m ever in a fight on a train and I need a guy to come alongside me and jam a miniature teacup into a bad guy’s eye socket, I hope the alongside-me guy is Denzel Washington.

But what’s really interesting about The Equalizer is that it presupposes a few things, morally. One, that there is evil in the world. There are evil people who do evil things and need to be either stopped from doing those things or punished for having already done them (or in some cases, both). Another presupposition is that real men (even typing this in 2023 is somewhat anxiety-inducing) protect those who can’t protect themselves and aren’t opportunists/takers, as is evidenced by how Denzel cares for his Lyft client in the first act of The Equalizer 2. And by “cares for” I mean bringing to justice the frat guys who have assaulted her, which he does with his bare hands and also the edge of a credit card (super cool).

Caveat: These movies are rated R for a whole bunch of violence but really nothing else. If you’re put off by a good guy creatively beating-up and sometimes killing a bunch of bad guys, very bloodily, these movies probably aren’t for you.

There is nothing ironic or sneering or aloof or indifferent about Denzel Washington’s character in The Equalizer. He doesn’t save the world (per se), or care for everyone, but the people he chooses to care for he really cares for. For example, he seems to really be opposed to human trafficking, which prior to this year I thought was a thing that just about everybody opposed. He seems really against police corruption/racketeering, as evidenced by a beating he gives a pair of corrupt cops. He is, of course, put off when people kill his friends. Conversely, he seems to like reuniting kidnapped children with their parents, and chipping in to beautify his apartment complex’s shared garden space. Look up “good dude” in the dictionary, and you’ll find an entry on Denzel’s character in these movies.

Personally, I’m inclined to like this character because he also loves reading books and eating soup, which are two things I’m also very fond of. These movies are so weird.

That said, these movies weirdly “work” in any decade, in that they’d make great ’70s, ’80s, or ’90s action movies, because they trade heavily on good-guy/bad-guy dynamics. Which dynamics are unambiguous and usually pretty satisfying. They’re movies where bad guys get what they deserve and people get rescued out of gang life and human trafficking and pretty much every other bad thing there could be. I like this, because it reminds me of some things.

Namely that even though there is a good bit of “total depravity of man” presenting itself in Hollywood and in real life, there is also some “created in God’s image” at work too. Sometimes, even on this side of eternity, evil is vanquished, sin is punished, and good prevails. I need to see this, and be encouraged by it, even in the fiction I consume.

These movies are the very definition of “unimportant.” But, ultimately, I would so much rather watch them than the latest piece of Wes Anderson or Noah Baumbach hipster navel-gazing. I’d rather watch them than whatever important-but-incomprehensible next thing it is that Terrence Malick is working on. Because they’re reminders that a movie doesn’t have to be arty and inaccessible to “say something.”

Editor’s note: The Equalizer 3 is currently in theaters.