The late, lamented Edward Woodward must be rolling over in his grave.

The Equalizer – based on the 1985-89 TV series of the same name that starred Woodward as a former middle-aged intelligence agent Robert McCall – gets the big screen treatment, reuniting Training Day director Antoine Fuqua and actor Denzel Washington (who won an Oscar for Training Day for those of you keeping score). Washington also gets an executive producer credit.

Other than the name and title, Washington’s McCall has nothing in common with Woodward’s McCall, who was smartly dressed in expensive suits, ties, and overcoats and had an air of class about him. Woodward’s McCall wanted to atone for his past sins as an intelligence agent (it was implied but never mentioned outright that he worked for the CIA) by working as a troubleshooter/bodyguard/private detective/vigilante in New York City. He relied mostly on stealth, guile, brains, and guerilla warfare tactics than he did on brawn. He rarely got into fisticuffs but when he did, he usually had fellow ex-spy Mickey Kostmayer (Keith Szarabajka, The Dark Knight) for that.

Washington’s McCall is an ex-CIA black ops agent who faked his death in a car bombing. He lives a quiet existence as a friendly loner working at the Home Depot-esque Home Mart in Boston. Widowed and presumably childless (Woodward’s McCall was divorced and estranged from his two children for years), McCall performs these clandestine good Samaritan acts, such as retrieving a co-worker’s ring from a robber or forcing two dirty cops to give back protection money they extort from area businesses.

McCall suffers for obsessive-compulsive syndrome (his napkin and utensils must be arranged exactly). He spends his nights at a 24-hour diner. There, he reads The Old Man and the Sea and befriends a young hooker named Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz, Let Me In).

Teri is brutally beaten by her pimp (David Meunier, The Incredible Hulk), prompting McCall to go after him, returning to the person he once was and the life he left behind. He kills her pimp and several henchmen in a stylized, over-the-top action sequence that he times on his wristwatch in 28 seconds.

Turns out this flesh racket is run by the Russian mob boss of Russian mob bosses: Vladimir Pushkin (Vladimir Kulich, TV’s Angel). He sends his chief leg-breaker Teddy (Marton Csokas, The Amazing Spider-Man 2) to find out who did this. Teddy is a sociopath who is very good at hurting people, setting up the inevitable battle between him and McCall.

So a war erupts between McCall and Teddy in what is mutually assured destruction. When Teddy escalates, McCall escalates, leaving behind a trail of bodies. The finale ends in Home Mart where McCall uses a variety of garden tools to take out Teddy’s thugs one by one, boiling it down to him and Teddy. Ho hum. It is all very predictable.

Guess who wins?
And, no, I’m not giving away any spoilers. You can see this one coming for miles and miles away.

The only thing the movie has in common with the show is the epilogue scene, which blatantly sets it up for the inevitable sequel, where McCall puts an ad on the Internet (as opposed to the newspaper in the series) that reads: “Odds against you? Need help? Call the Equalizer.”

This movie is gratuitously violent – it overkills it in terms of the blood and gore and language. Washington’s last several movies have been bad; it’s like he’s doing them for the paycheck, which is a shame because he’s a phenomenal actor. One of the best of his generation, in fact, as evidenced by his performances in Philadelphia, Crimson Tide, Glory, Much Ado About Nothing, and Courage Under Fire.

The Equalizer feels like a rehash of Washington’s 2004 action thriller Man on Fire (which is also about an ex-intelligence agent) and The Punisher. It feels so ersatz (or say rather unequal) in comparison to the original series, which was more of a thinking man’s action-thriller that was intelligently written.

If you want to see Washington as The Equalizer, see Man on Fire.
If you want to see Woodward as The Equalizer, do yourself a favor and get the entire series which has recently been released on DVD and BluRay in a limited edition package.

Grade: D