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The Equalizer | 2014 | R | - 4.8.10

An insomniac (Denzel Washington) leads a quiet life in his second career at a DIY megamart. When he meets a teen girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) who is a sex slave to a Russian mob boss (Marton Csokas) he feels he must intervene; his deadly skills from a former, mysterious career prove useful and decides to become the champion of the innocent who have nowhere else to turn. Also with David Harbour, Haley Bennett, Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo. Several lines of dialogue are in Russian with English subtitles and a few have no subtitles. Some tattoos on men's chests are untranslated Russian phrases. Directed by Antoine Fuqua. [2:11]

SEX/NUDITY 4 - A man showers in a large glass booth, in which we see his entire bare body (his crotch is blurred out); his torso, front and back, and arms are covered in gang-type tattoos.
 A teen girl wears two short, clingy dresses that reveal some cleavage, along with most of her legs from upper thigh to ankles. A teen girl wears a tight stretch tank top that reveals the straps and top of her bra, bare shoulders and arms and some of her abdomen along with short-shorts that reveal nearly all of her bare thighs, all of her lower legs and most of her feet in strapped 6-inch heels. A woman wears a tight-fitting sweater-type mini-dress that reveals bare legs from ankles to upper thighs and a little cleavage. A website of female escorts shows a few women wearing crop tops and shorts that reveal cleavage, bare shoulders and arms and bare thighs. Approximately two dozen men wear sleeveless shirts that reveal gang-type tattoos (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A man wears shorts in his bathroom and we see half of his thighs as he treats a cut (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A woman at home wears flowered shorts that reveal half of her bare thighs and lower legs.
 A man speaks nightly with a teen girl who is a prostitute in a diner while waiting for her pimp to send customers to pick her up in limousines. A prostitution ring is run out of a restaurant and one of the prostitutes sits in the restaurant at night and is picked up in limousines by customers; we see her get into a car.
 A pimp gives a man a card for prostitution orders and the man shows up at the restaurant where the pimp has an office; the pimp asks, "Can you still get it up , grandfather?" and that he has a girl that still performs oral sex (using crude terms). A police officer asks his partner how the other man started taking protection money from businesses and the other cop says, "I blew the commissioner."

VIOLENCE/GORE 8 - Several men enter a home improvement store at closing and take several male and female hostages and another man enters the store, slits the throat of one of the attackers and we see blood flow; the man then beats another of the attackers with a fire extinguisher (no blood is seen) as a security guard is shot in the leg, the man strangles another attacker using barbed wire (he bleeds to death, dripping blood on the floor in a pool), the man stabs tree trimming shears through the neck of another attacker, killing him in a spurt of blood and then puts a large drill to the back of another attacker's head and we hear it drilling off-screen (we see the bloody drill bit drip in close-up); another attacker is stabbed with many kitchen knives and he and the man fall to the floor, choke each other and grapple over shards of glass several times before one of them is stabbed in the brain stem, killing him in pools of blood; an attacker stands in the break room and a small tank of propane explodes in the microwave, sending fire gushing toward the audience and a bloody nail sticks into a wall as a man fires a nail gun several times into an attacker's arm and leg before a final shot to the throat and the injured man coughs out blood and dies.
 A man enters the back room of a restaurant and tries to buy a prostitute's freedom from her pimp who refuses and two men point their rifles at him; the first man walks to the door to leave, opens and shuts it three times, turns around and kills the five men in the room using a knife, a gun, a corkscrew, a silver chain necklace and a glass; the man uses a few punches as he slits one man's throat, with blood flow and he stabs another man in the neck, spurting blood, then drives the glass deep into the eye socket and brain of another man, and shoots another man in the heart to drop off-screen; the man kills one final man by choking him with his necklace, cutting deeply into the man's throat and dropping him on his back, counting the seconds as the man gurgles and dies in a pool of blood.
 A man calmly questions a woman sitting in a chair, frightening her to tears, then kisses her forehead and places her in a headlock before strangling her to death silently (we see her legs convulse and her body become still). A man in a diner pulls a handgun on another man reading a book before he hits the first man with the book, takes the gun and shoots him, then slams his head on the tabletop and turns off the lights. A man enters a business, offers the owner an illegal business that the owner refuses and the first man pounds him with one fist many times as the man sits in his office chair and many more times after he falls to the floor while a man in the office shoots two other men and we see some spots of blood as they die; the shooter watches in horror as the first man continues to punch the downed man and smiling when he is finished (we see the first man's knuckles with some blood on them).
 A man sits in an apartment bathroom with an automatic rifle and talks to another man as the lights go off and we hear water running; when the lights come back one man goes to turn the water off in an overflowing sink and we see bare wires lying on the floor in water as the man screams. As a man walks out of an apartment building we see two dead men with one lying on stairs and the other on a floor in a pool of blood and another dead man lies outside partially under a parked car.
 A man appears from an alley and tells two police officers to return protection money they received from all the businesses they extorted in the neighborhood and he shows the officers video he recorded of the two planning the extortions; the officers draw handguns and the man takes them away and beats both men (we see their bloody faces) and we see both men later with taped broken noses and one of the men with a broken arm in a sling as they hand money to a restaurant owner.
 A teen girl in a diner at night is shown with a bruise covering her cheekbone; she walks home as she talks with an older man until an SUV pulls across their path, a man gets out and slaps the girl hard across the face while another man with a gun stands guard and drives her away.
 A man at home hears his car alarm go off in the garage and is struck in the head when he goes to look; another man forces him into the car, locks the door, sits in a chair and remote-starts the vehicle that has a hose connected to the exhaust pipe and leading to the front of the car where we see the trapped man coughing, and pounding on the window; the man curses and slobbers while the other man keeps him in the car until he agrees to cooperate with shutting down a crime ring.
 An armed man robs a home improvement store, frightening the cashier, who turns over her ring; an employee follows the robber outside and gets his license plate number, then walks into the hardware department and selects a sledgehammer that he cleans of blood the next day and hangs back up for sale.
 We hear that a teen girl is in the ICU and the camera cuts to her room, where we see IV bags on a stand and the girl's face covered in raw patches, blood and scabs as she cries; we hear that she received a slap or punch from a prostitution customer and she hit him back, so her pimp beat her up as an example to the other women.
 We see morgue photos of several dead men with slashes, a big bloody eye socket covering most of a face, puncture wounds, bruises and lacerations. A TV news report states that a crime scene looked like a gangland execution. A man looks at crime scene photos showing large bloodstains on the carpet of the crime scene and wide blood spatter on an icon of the Madonna. A man washes blood from his hands in his bathroom sink after killing several men and we see a small scrape on one knuckle of his right hand. We see a crime scene photo of a woman with bruises across her neck and throat. Snapshots of two dead men with bloody faces are shown to a man; we hear that the dead persons were beaten badly and their testicles removed and stuffed down their throats before being placed into a car trunk.
 Two men enter a meat cutting operation where we see sides of beef hanging on hooks and close-ups of electric knives slicing meats as one of the men holds several others at gunpoint; other men point guns at him, but do not shoot and the camera cuts to the first two men in a hallway, where they have a man handcuffed to a pipe. A man visits another man at the second man's restaurant and it is charred and full of water and debris from a fire; after repairing and reopening the restaurant two police officers eat, then force the other patrons to leave and demand protection money, which they receive. A man walks past three men in an SUV and takes their pictures with a smartphone; they chase him and when they enter the man's apartment, he is not there (we see the man pouring honey into a cut on his thigh and leaving a bloody towel in a bathroom sink) and he watches the men in his apartment on a laptop and tablet from cameras he has installed around his apartment. Police find a cold locker in a meat cutting operation full of men tied-up and sitting in clouds of frozen mists and their cloudy breath.
 A man walks away from a freighter as it explodes and we see fire and smoke spreading across the screen several times. A tanker truck explodes and fills the screen with yellow flames and black smoke.
 A man confronts another man in a restaurant that is otherwise empty and puts a bloody pair of eyeglasses on the table in front of him; the first man tells the second man to close down his operations in America and talks about an orphan boy who killed his adoptive parents. We hear that a man's wife died, but not how, and that he promised her to stop working in a violent occupation, but not the job title. A man describes a literary scene where a large fish hangs on the side of a fishing boat, bleeding, and sharks swim up and eat the fish off the side of the boat. A gang operates a crime ring of drug dealers, prostitutes, weapons sales and protection scams out of an expensive restaurant and bar. A man visits an older man and says to him, "You had a nice funeral, in case you were wondering," and "If anyone could walk away from a car bomb, it was you" (no other information about the incident is revealed).
 A gang of men appears in many scenes wearing sleeveless shirts that reveal many tattoos of knives, skulls and devil faces on necks, arms and shoulders while carrying automatic handguns, Uzis and larger automatic rifles, along with long military and switchblade-type knives. A man appears shirtless in one scene, revealing tattoos that include the Russian word for "death" above giant batwings and the face of the devil and skulls across his back from neck to waist; below his throat is a tattooed knife as if it entered the skin and came out again a few inches to the left and below the knife is another phrase in Russian and below and around it are skulls. Tattooed designs and swastikas cover the arms of many men.

LANGUAGE 10 - About 89 F-words and its derivatives, 1 obscene hand gesture, 7 scatological terms, 3 anatomical terms, 7 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, dumb, moron, stupid, whore, Mr. Sunshine, papa, grandfather [said sarcastically in Russian three times: dyedooshka]), stereotypical references to Russians, the Irish, Italians, Americans, corrupt police officers, mobsters, pimps, prostitutes and their customers, small business owners, the obese, ex-government agents, exclamations (shut-sup), 1 religious profanity (GD), 3 religious exclamations (Holy Moly, Holy [scatological term deleted], Oh My God).

SUBSTANCE USE - A tall amber liquid-medication bottle is shown on a table in an apartment where a man makes a fake airsickness medication label for a prescription pill bottle, and three large IV bags of clear liquid hang from a metal stand in an ICU cubicle. A beer sign hangs over the door of a market, two men drink vodka at a table in a bar, five men drink double shots of vodka from whiskey glasses in a back room of a bar, and two men sit with glasses of wine in a bar and one man drinks while the other man leaves and a third man enters and places a bloody pair of eyeglasses into an untouched glass of wine. A man smokes a cigarette at home in the dark.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Russian crime mobs, extortion, abuse of females, prostitution, corrupt police officers, secrets, justice, redemption, reaching goals, having confidence, helping others.

MESSAGE - Crime syndicates and corrupt police officers can be brought to justice.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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