Before Law and Order started its crusade to clean up the streets (and employ Broadway actors) of New York, there was one man who was waging war on crime: Robert McCall, also known as The Equalizer. If you needed help with anything criminal, unsavory, or just plain unfair, this former intelligence agent would help you – free of charge. All you had to do was give him a call through his newspaper ad, and he'd be there to save you. Of course, almost three decades later, Hollywood thinks it's a good time to give The Equalizer a call and enlist him in the battle against moviegoer's wallets.
Yahoo has premiered the teaser poster for the Antoine Fuqua-directed adaptation, and already it's managed to nail one thing that the original show was famous for: keeping its protagonist in the shadows. Denzel Washington is going to be this generation's Robert McCall, who finds himself paired with Chloe Grace Moretz (who continues to have a great year) as his first case: a teen prostitute in trouble with the Russian Mob. So the movie is Denzel Washington protecting a young woman against criminal forces? Why is this sounding vaguely excitingly yet familiar?
We can all see why Denzel Washington got the role in this movie, because if his previous experience as an ex-military bad ass didn't cinch it, his previous role in Fuqua's Training Day definitely did. What we can't really see in this poster is Washington himself. While it's typical of a teaser poster to be vague, this is still supposed to be promoting a movie that's due out in September. Hopefully the release of this poster is a sign that we will be getting to see a trailer for the film very soon.
When the first footage does come, I'm willing to bet that it will be heavily based on the opening credit sequence of the show. At the very least, I'm hoping we get to see some sort of reference to Denzel Washington as the trademark silhouette of justice in front of a fresh looking sports car, just like the series:
In case you're wondering where you saw that opening in the past six months, it was recently used as a set up to a rather effective gag in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street:
The Equalizer will be in theaters on September 26th. Keep an eye out for any Craigslist ads that might be used for viral marketing, because if any film is begging for that approach, it'd be this one.
