Summary
There’s at least 4 different movies going on here. One of them even has Denzel in it.
In one of those weird Hollywood quirks, of which there are too many to count, THE EQUALIZER 2 represents actor Denzel Washington’s first sequel. It’s not that he appears to be against the franchise factory, as the Oscar-winning actor has turned up in remakes The Taking of Pelham 123 and The Magnificent Seven over the last decade. Nevertheless, Antoine Fuqua’s film is the first time Washington has been able to explore a role at length since his 137 episodes of St. Elsewhere.
His character of retired CIA operative Robert McCall is a smart cookie. We know this because he’s read almost 100 books. Quietly helping out neighbourhood folks and rescuing kidnapped children in Turkey, he makes do by driving for Lyft and being kind to strangers. However, when tragedy strikes his friend Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo), his particular set of skills are unleashed on the unsuspecting bad guys.
Despite the thriller trappings, returning screenwriter Richard Wenk (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back) . On one hand, there’s a potentially powerful narrative about McCall steering young painter Miles (Moonlight‘s Ashton Sanders) away from the gang life. Punctuated by references to Between the World and Me, award-winning writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ missive to his son, it winds up being one of several threads that elongate the first act. Indeed, there’s a whole subplot about a Holocaust survivor looking for his lost family for some reason.
What Wenk and Fuqua retain from the original is an underlying tension, with a literal building storm flagged early in the film, one that leads our hero to a coastal shootout while being buffeted by driving winds and rain. It’s one of several tense and surprisingly bloodthirsty action set-pieces that remind us of McCall’s inability to not be beat.
Washington continues his role as the avuncular assassin, exchanging his protection of Chloë Grace Moretz for another troubled teen. However, Wenk’s screenplay keeps the story branches so separated for the first half of the film that poor Miles merely becomes a plot device until needed. Similarly, for the first 45 minutes Washington is left spinning his wheels and polishing a series of emblematic apples. Leo is terrific in her handful of scenes, but Bill Pullman is criminally underused.
THE EQUALIZER 2 could have been the start of a proper cinematic franchise for Washington, or an opportunity for the 63-year-old actor to carve out a Liam Neeson-esque niche in the thriller landscape. Yet this is familiar territory for everyone involved, a kitchen sink of a film that overflows with ideas but gets clogged before the payoff.
