Poster © Sony Pictures Releasing. Shown at reduced size for review and commentary.
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GenreAction, Crime & Thriller
RatedR
Runtime2 hr 12 mins
ReleasedSeptember 26, 2014
StreamingSee Where to Watch
DirectorAntoine Fuqua
StarringDenzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz
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The Equalizer (2014)
| ▶Stream It | ★The Numbers |
| 🎫Get Tickets | ✎Edit History |
| iIMDb Profile | %Rotten Tomatoes |
| WWikipedia | LLetterboxd |
| TTMDB | +Add to Top 8 |
| The Equalizer's Details | |
| Genre | Action, Crime & Thriller |
| Rated | R |
| Released | 09/07/2014 (TIFF); 09/26/2014 (United States) |
| Streaming | See Where to Watch on this page. |
| Running Time | 2 hr 12 mins |
| Budget | $55–73M (reported) |
| Box Office | Updated daily from Box Office Mojo. See the numbers below. |
| Based On | The Equalizer by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| The Equalizer's Interests | |
| General | Hardware stores, all-night diners, tea bags wrapped in napkins, classic novels, stopwatches. |
| Music | Harry Gregson-Williams |
| Movies | The Equalizer 2 (2018). McCall drives for a ride share app now. |
| Television | The Equalizer. The 1980s series started it, and Queen Latifah runs the reboot. |
| Heroes | Ralphie, whose security guard dreams deserve a full training montage. |
| The Equalizer's Crew | |
| Director | Antoine Fuqua |
| Writers | Richard Wenk |
| Producers | Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Denzel Washington, Alex Siskin, Steve Tisch, Mace Neufeld, Tony Eldridge, Michael Sloan |
| Cinematography | Mauro Fiore |
| Music | Harry Gregson-Williams |
| Edited By | John Refoua |
| Production | Columbia Pictures, LStar Capital, Village Roadshow Pictures, Escape Artists, Mace Neufeld Productions, Zhiv Productions |
| Distributed By | Sony Pictures Releasing |
Picture John Wick if he read novels at a diner and wrapped his own tea bag in a napkin before every visit. Denzel Washington’s Robert McCall is so tidy it’s almost a threat. The best stuff is the quiet part: the hardware store job, the coworker he coaches, the late-night chats with Chloë Grace Moretz’s Teri. Then the movie remembers it’s an action flick and spends 132 minutes letting bad guys line up to get flattened. The slow-motion bit where McCall scans a room and plans every move is cool the first time and a gimmick by the third. Teri vanishes for most of the movie, and Marton Csokas’s Teddy is a generic scary guy in a nice suit. Still, Denzel could make a tax seminar feel dangerous. It made $192 million worldwide and earned an A minus CinemaScore, so the crowd had fun. A 6.2 because he’s magnetic and the movie around him is a vending machine of fights. $98 says you start timing how long your chores take, just to feel efficient.
What works: Denzel Washington’s calm, tidy menace, plus the quiet early scenes at the diner and the hardware store.
What doesn’t: Teri disappears for most of the movie, and the villain is a nice suit with no personality inside it.
Who it’s for: People who want to watch a mild-mannered guy turn out to be the most dangerous person in town, and Denzel completists.
Spoilers
McCall turns his own hardware store into a trap and takes out Teddy’s crew using whatever is on the shelves. He then flies to Moscow to deal with the mob boss himself, and Teri, healed up, comes back to the diner to start over.
Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) lives a very tidy, very quiet life in Boston. He works at a hardware superstore, coaches his coworker Ralphie (Johnny Skourtis) for a security guard test, and spends sleepless nights reading classic novels at the same corner diner. That is where he gets to know Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz), a teenager trapped working for the Russian mob. When her bosses put her in the hospital, McCall stops being quiet. That gets the attention of Teddy (Marton Csokas), a cold fixer flown in to clean things up. Antoine Fuqua directs. One hundred thirty-two minutes, timed on a stopwatch.
Anyone getting pushed around who could use a quiet friend with a stopwatch.
| Denzel Washington | Robert McCall |
| Marton Csokas | Teddy/Nicolai |
| Chloë Grace Moretz | Teri/Alina |
| David Harbour | Frank Masters |
| Haley Bennett | Mandy |
| Bill Pullman | Brian Plummer |
| Melissa Leo | Susan Plummer |
| David Meunier | Slavi |
| Johnny Skourtis | Ralphie |
| Alex Veadov | Tevi |
| Vladimir Kulich | Vladimir Pushkin |
| Roger Mitchell | the lead investigator |
- (cur | prev) 14:30, 17 October 2026 DataBot +480 Numbers refreshed: Worldwide box office $192.3M; Domestic box office $101.5M; Opening weekend $34.1M; Profit / loss (est.) +$165K; Rotten Tomatoes 61%; CinemaScore A−; box office chart updated; Rotten Tomatoes critics 61% (205 reviews); Metacritic 57 / 100; CinemaScore A−; IMDb users 7.3 / 10 (473,865 votes); movie.guru score 6.1.
- (cur | prev) 12:00, 17 October 2026 DataBot +2,000 Profile created from Wikipedia and Box Office Mojo: cast, crew, release dates, budget, official trailer.