Proving our longstanding theory that Russian mobsters ruin everything, The Equalizer is all prepared to be a nice movie about Denzel Washington working at a home improvement store and forming a book club with Chloë Moretz, when some thickly accented thugs—taking some downtime from tormenting Liam Neeson and Nicolas Cage—do something terrible yet again. As is de rigueur for men with a certain set of skills and a shady past, Washington is then called into action, forced to right wrongs and shoot people to an Eminem soundtrack before he can return to his quiet life of price checks and Hemingway paperbacks.
As Washington steps into the TV role once played by Edward Woodward, he revisits his own violent past by reteaming with his Training Day director Antoine Fuqua. And Sony is so pleased with their results, it’s already begun making plans for a franchise that could potentially last for as many years as the 1980s show it’s based on. So you can probably expect it to be a while before Washington is finally allowed to get back to his books—at least so long as Russia continues to export nothing but vodka and violent criminals.