The Equalizer & What We Did On Our Holiday – Richards Reckons Reviews

EXTRA! EXTRA! Richards Reckons is doing two reviews again! Read all about it! I know, I know. It’s a news story that is gonna change your life.

We shall start with The Equalizer.

Talk to the hand, ‘cos the face ain’t listening!

Though it sounds like it follows a mathematics based superhero, The Equalizer is not about a mathematics based superhero. Instead, it is about this; Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is a man who lives a very calm life working at a hardware store in Boston; he’s friendly, polite, doesn’t like bad language, willing to help his co-workers etc. He also can’t sleep and spends a lot of time in a 24 hour diner reading, where he meets Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), a lady of the night with some pretty horrible bosses. She’s put in the ICU by her bosses, which sparks Robert’s vigilantism attitude and killing-machine abilities from his past, leading to a one man war against the Russian mafia (who are almost all tattooed, fact fans).

I should mention that, once again, this was not a regular trip to the pictures for me and it may affect my judgment somewhat – instead of somebody breaking their arm and me heroically helping them like last week, this week the projector packed up the middle of a tense chase sequence, leading to an unplanned interval and a viewing of the same chase sequence twice. So, er, yes, bear that in mind.

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, The Equalizer is a modern remake of the 1980s TV series also named The Equalizer, with Edward Woodward as the titular Equalizer Robert McCall. Denzel Washington’s Robert McCall is a mix between MacGyver, Sherlock and Bryan Mills – with the ability to slow-mo examine people, make a weapon out of almost anything and… well, kick arse, frankly. But he’s also rather polite too, which is nice. Denzel Washington is brilliant in this role, and is great at all these things; being a killing machine and a sympathetic nice guy at the same time actually quite convincingly. Don’t get me wrong, the violence is ridiculous and cartoony, but the character perpetrating said violence is quite convincing. Chloe Grace Moretz also adds a nice, human and vulnerable spin onto a character who otherwise would be there just as a catalyst for McCall to go into Equalizer mode.

As a result of this central performance by ol’ Denz, when a scene comes by once in a blue moon that Robert McCall is not in, they are rather boring as a result. The baddies in this have little to no character whatsoever apart from all being tattooed and horrible – they are just caricatures of evil baddie mob men or Boston corrupt cops, who seem to not know any other word than the F word. I suppose in the long run it’s a good thing that we can’t get attached to these people who are essentially fodder to be equalized, but still; something different in the mix would have been nice.

The first and final acts of these film I actually rather enjoyed; the build up to McCall going into killer mode again in the first half and the rather ingenious finale based almost entirely in a Homebase-esque location (which I really rather enjoyed, it reminded me of Shoot Em Up in places). The middle of the film however is quite baggy, long and convoluted – focussing on the hierarchy of the Russian mob by adding in random bad guy characters that we don’t necessarily care about and making things a bit more confusing than they need to be. It also misses out some scenes that it would have been fun to see, instead focussing on the aftermath. There is also the final scene which sets up the rest of a potential series of films sticking to the old Equalizer legend, which is interesting but feels a bit out of place in relation to what you’ve just seen happen for the past couple of hours.

All in all, The Equalizer is big, silly action with a portion of OTT and items-based violence and a fairly boring and generic plot, married together with a great central performance by Denzel Washington, who is really what saves the film from being run of the mill. If there’s a sequel, which it is clearly gunning for, then count me in. Don’t expect too much from it, mind; you won’t find much in the way of substance here, but you may find a bit in the way of fun.

Now then, onto What We Did On Our Holiday (as in the film, not literally a blow by blow account about what I did on my holiday – that’s another blog for another day).

What We Did On Our Holiday goes a little something like this; Doug McLeod (David Tennant) and Abi McLeod (Rosamund Pike) are a soon-to-be-divorced married couple with three children who are taking a trip up to Doug’s childhood home in the Scottish Highlands to celebrate his father Gordie’s (Billy Connolly) 75th birthday, with his extremely uptight brother Gavin (Ben Miller) and his very quiet wife Margaret (Amelia Bullmore – or Sonja to Alan Partridge fans).

This is a film from the makers of the hit BBC show Outnumbered, Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton – indeed, it is written and directed by them too. You can very much see the DNA of Outnumbered in this film – the technique of allowing kids to improvise their own dialogue is rather genius and surprisingly plays as well on film as it does on television, providing more of the films laugh out loud moments. Indeed, this is probably the closest you will ever see to an Outnumbered movie. The film is so close to its DNA that some of the beginning scenes (set in a suburban London house – sound familiar?) genuinely feel strange without Hugh Dennis or Claire Skinner or any of the regular kids.

The Outnumbered humour is there throughout the first half (including some extremely familiar situations travelling on a motorway), however in the middle the plot takes a rather dark turn that you won’t see coming. That is to say, you won’t see it coming before you go into the cinema (unless you’re some sort of soothsayer, and if that’s the case why are you even going to the cinema in the first place?) – pretty much from the first scene, you know that this turn is probably going to happen. This almost completely jolts the flow of the film. It’s still funny, but a bit less so as it deals with a rather morbid subject matter in a frivolous way that doesn’t really ever feel like it works. The film then becomes centred around this turn, and so never quite recovers to glory era of the very funny first half; it’s still funny, but the laugh out loud moments become more separated and parts of it more tragic.

Billy Connolly is wonderful in his role as Gordie, a very cheeky grandfather who loves his grandkids more than anything; he clearly relished and loved playing this role, and it’s a love that the audience can feel too. David Tennant and Rosamund Pike are both good too as the exasperated parents of the kids trying to deal with the breakdown of their marriage in a humane way. Special mention should also go to Emilia Jones as the oldest child Lottie, who has to deal with both her parents divorcing AND lying about it, as well as her siblings generally being younger siblings, and copes in her own way by writing everything down in her little notebook; she plays it very well, seeming like a 10 year old who is sweet yet feels jaded by life already. The relationship between her and Gordie is the beating heart of the film.

Overall, the film could be funnier in my opinion (especially having loved and enjoyed Outnumbered for many years), but if you’re a fan of Outnumbered it certainly is funny enough to warrant going to see. What We Did On Our Holiday is trying to be touching as well as funny, but succeeds more at the latter rather than the former.