The Equalizer
Short description
Robert McCall has left behind a violent career as a covert operative and settled into an ordinary life in Boston, working at a home improvement store and keeping to himself. That routine is disturbed when he meets Teri, a young woman trapped in the control of Russian gangsters. Unable to look away, McCall draws on the skills he thought he had buried and takes on the men holding her, a decision that pulls him into a wider conflict and puts his quiet identity at risk.
Antoine Fuqua directed the film, the tenth of the nineteen features he has made in chronological order, arriving between Olympus Has Fallen and Southpaw. Denzel Washington plays McCall and also produced, alongside Steve Tisch and Mace Neufeld, from a screenplay by Richard Wenk with Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim. The cast includes Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour, Haley Bennett and Bill Pullman; 45 performers and 112 crew members are credited. Made for 55 million dollars, it returned about 192 million worldwide, a strong result for an action thriller. On IMDb it holds 7.3/10 from roughly 463,000 votes and on TMDB 7.3/10 from over 10,000, while the critics' rating stands at 5.8/10 from 205 reviews, so audiences rated it more warmly than reviewers did.
What's left behind the scenes
- Originally, Russell Crowe was planned to play Robert McCall.
- The role of Terry was initially written for a more mature actress, but Chloë Grace Moretz impressed the director so much that the role was rewritten for her.
- Denzel Washington performed almost all of the fight scenes himself.
- The main character uses a Suunto Core All Black watch. A stopwatch is displayed in large numerals on the screen. This function is not available in the standard model. The watch was specially modified for the film's shooting.
- The idea for one of the most brutal fight scenes came from director Antoine Fuqua. He specifically met with a friend who knew a lot about the criminal world and asked him to talk about the rules of street fighting. The friend put a pile of objects on the table, took out a corkscrew, and demonstrated a couple of techniques.
- The role of the criminal sociopath was played by Marton Csokas. He did not want his character to speak with a typical Eastern European accent, so his character uses some words and phrases from Cockney slang.
- To make the fight scenes more realistic, Antoine Fuqua met with professional boxers. Thanks to these conversations, he realized that it was necessary to slow down the pace in the fight scenes.
- When Ralphie reaches the electrical panel, he turns on the electricity, and we see that the microwave, which Robert had previously charged with tanks of liquid hydrogen, immediately turns on and the timer starts. However, the microwave is electronically controlled, and it is impossible to pre-program the timer without electricity.
- When Terry is sitting in a cafe in one of the first scenes of the film, she has a cross earring in her right ear, but it is gone in the next scene. And when she left the cafe, the earrings were back in place.
- Filming took place in Boston from May to September 2013.
- The film is based on the television series “The Equalizer” (1985-1989). The show was so popular that people on the street would approach the lead actor, Edward Woodward, and ask him for help – not as an actor, but as a “former secret agent.”
- Melissa Leo previously appeared in the series “The Equalizer” (1985–1989).
- During preparation for filming, Chloe Grace Moretz contacted the organization “Nightline”: its staff helps American women in crisis. The actress was not only able to communicate with these women, but also to raise awareness of the organization’s work.
- The name of the oil company is used in the genitive case, specifically “Oil Technologies,” when it should be in the nominative case.
- In the scene where the protagonist repeatedly photographs the bandits in the car with his phone, he runs along the house and turns left into an alleyway where there’s a fence on the right and the other side of the same house on the left. The hero only touches the nearby pole, but doesn’t touch the house wall; however, when one of the bandits runs through the same spot, blood appears on the wall, which the main villain notices as a “trace”.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
