I loved "The Equalizer" show back in the day, no doubt due to the great Edward Woodward in the title role, having enjoyed his theatrical films like "Breaker Morant", "The Wicker Man" and "Sitting Target" (among others) a decade before. But I didn't see this episode until now on a revival TV channel, and it played fresh as a daisy.
That's because the theme of the show indicts vigilantism, highly relevant because in effect the character of The Equalizer operates in the fashion of a vigilante, albeit a highly sympathetic one the audience can root for.
The dreadful image of George Zimmerman, Florida's gift to "vigilantes who go unpunished", popped into my head in the opening scenes, where guys comprising a small-town Neighborhood Watch rush to a warehouse one night after monitoring its alarm going off, and one of them brutally kills a young Black teen who is merely walking home from a rock concert. The group immediately covers up their crime and frames the deceased as a burglar who fell to an accidental death.
His mom and brother are more than distraught, but Woodward arrives to the rescue, oh so cleverly intimidating the culprits with dark secrets from their past, in an effort to get them to turn themselves in. Woodward's powerful performance carries the show, with a no-name guest star cast and a befuddled policeman (typecast "little man" Joe Grifasi) no match for this thespian display of near-brilliance. As a neighborhood creep who sells a gun to the dead boy's brother, Giancarlo Esposito is incisive in a small role prior to his breakthrough in films by Spike Lee.
That's because the theme of the show indicts vigilantism, highly relevant because in effect the character of The Equalizer operates in the fashion of a vigilante, albeit a highly sympathetic one the audience can root for.
The dreadful image of George Zimmerman, Florida's gift to "vigilantes who go unpunished", popped into my head in the opening scenes, where guys comprising a small-town Neighborhood Watch rush to a warehouse one night after monitoring its alarm going off, and one of them brutally kills a young Black teen who is merely walking home from a rock concert. The group immediately covers up their crime and frames the deceased as a burglar who fell to an accidental death.
His mom and brother are more than distraught, but Woodward arrives to the rescue, oh so cleverly intimidating the culprits with dark secrets from their past, in an effort to get them to turn themselves in. Woodward's powerful performance carries the show, with a no-name guest star cast and a befuddled policeman (typecast "little man" Joe Grifasi) no match for this thespian display of near-brilliance. As a neighborhood creep who sells a gun to the dead boy's brother, Giancarlo Esposito is incisive in a small role prior to his breakthrough in films by Spike Lee.
