What Saif Ali Khan fails to achieve, Denzel Washington does it with relish. He is also repeating himself for an audience who wants to see more of him in the action space, one last time and that last time gets pushed by a fan boy of a director after every couple of years.
This week, it is the turn of Antoine Fuqua who seems to have created a franchise for the aging action star to pulp the fan base.
Washington plays a former agent McCall who has put his eventful past behind him.
As the name suggests, destiny calls him out of hibernation when he comes to the rescue of a hooker (Chloe). Little does he realise that what seems like a one-off act of courage will bring him back in the game of cat and mouse where he has to take on a new set of villains. And yes, they are Russian led by a sociopath Teddy (Csokas), a reservoir of darkness. Like the name of Washington’s character,the villain’s ethnicity and motivations are also predictable. So is the narrative arc.
A self-effacing man comes out of retirement to deliver justice on behalf of the have-nots. A one man army moving in slow motion is a common sight. What is not is Washington’s mystic like serenity in handling the extremely violent situations. Washington is not stretching himself for another ‘Training Day’ but deliver just enough punches to make this contrived product watchable. Fuqua not only comes up with A–grade production values in action sequences but also slips in Mark Twain so that is doesn’t slide off in to the cheesy territory. It gives the proceedings a distinct appeal, a justification for McCall to go for the kill and Washington’s fans a reason to root for him all over again.
