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There’s something insulting about movies like this, in that they transform the complex and insoluble horrors of sex trafficking into a matter of just taking down a handful of villains, that one good man can make all the difference. This structure makes a game out of McCall’s killing spree, placing first Alina’s pimp, then enforcers, then a chief lieutenant (Marton Csokas) as stop-gaps in a journey to the top. So, if nothing else, this film avoids most of the worrisome racial politics of Scott’s picture, but it nonetheless relies on the same level of cinematic amplification to tackle a real and pervasive problem, in this case tying Alina’s safety all the way up to a Russian oligarch who rules Boston’s vice. In this case, it’s Alina (Chloë Grace Moretz), a teenage prostitute in the grip of the Russian mob, who inspires Washington’s Bob McCall to put down his charming collection of canonical literary classics and open up a few throats. What the film really retains from Man on Fire are the basics of an overdone plot, that of Washington as some kind of retired übermensch who finds himself tearing through bad guys when an impressionable white girl suffers harm. As for the film’s many action scenes, the frenzy of Scott’s almost experimentally frantic assembly is replaced by typically weak structure, filled with cuts that are at once simple and incomprehensible. That’s about the extent to which Fuqua can credibly ape Scott, however, and the rest of the film is filled with clumsy attempts at putting forward a style: blurry slo-mo meant to visualize the protagonist’s cat-like reflexes, pendulous Steadicam shots that swoop from a random object to a banal close-up of Denzel.
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Even director Antoine Fuqua tips his hat to the film, employing some Scottian transitions like a time-lapse that advances from day to night, or a cut-up assembly of helicopter shots for padding. It’s impossible not to think of the late Tony Scott’s Man on Fire while watching the latest Denzel Washington feature, The Equalizer.