Denzel Washington wreaks charming vengeance on the red carpet for The Equalizer
A cool thing about The Equalizer, a movie you may have heard if you (a) live in Toronto and (b) have eyes, is that it’s basically a riff on the 1974 urban vigilante action flick Death Wish. This is cool because star Denzel Washington had one of his earliest uncredited roles in the original Death Wish. And so, just as Charles Bronson’s bleeding heart liberal-cum-gun-shooting-reactionary cleaned up the uncredited Denzel Washington–infested streets of New York City in Death Wish, so too did The Equalizer star clean up Roy Thomson Hall with the ultimate open-carry weapon: movie star charm. Washington swayed and rocked and “Okay, okay, alright, alright”-ed down the Equalizer red carpet alongside director Antoine Fuqua and co-stars Marton Csokas and Chloë Grace Moretz to the delight of squealing fans who have (presumably) yet to see the movie. Anyway, critiques aside, if Denzel Washington’s lucrative career as a movie star ever peters out, he can probably do well reinventing himself as just a plain ol’ handsome man.
John Semley’s writing has appeared in the Guardian, Rolling Stone, Esquire and elsewhere. He is a regular contributor to Wired, the New Republic and the Toronto Star.
