I watched The Equalizer today, mainly because I’ve got plans to go see the second one tonight, and only this morning did it occur to me that I hadn’t gotten around to watching the first one. I’m glad I did, because A) It was surprisingly good, and B) My whatever-flick expectations for the sequel have been replaced with honest-to-god anticipation. The Equalizer is a whole two hours long, and in those two hours you’ll find a hero-driven action thriller that has been flavored with dramatic tension and deliberate sobriety. There is a mystery to Denzel Washington’s enigmatic protagonist, and it is this mystery that makes up the majority of this character’s intrigue. This allows the movie to expertly shift the focus and interest away from what his character is doing, to the overarching question of how he’s able to do it.

The mystery surrounding Washington’s hero also plays a crucial part due to the fact that it allows the audience to stay invested in (and in some cases, tolerate) what would otherwise be a boringly invincible, ineffectual, unstoppable force that is bereft of risk and tension. As such, the few places this movie fell short can be attributed to a miscalculated surplus of either indulgence or exposition, both of which threaten the delicate balance that allows this movie to be enjoyable.