![]() ![]() It’s a film of inestimable blandness, a film in which the outcome is foregone before the opening credits unspool and for whom this reviewer felt sagged considerably during its many, many moments of introspective gloom. Fuqua’s success in teaming up with Washington has led us a merry dance of frustrating ambivalence over the journey (I was one of the few who wasn’t entranced with Washington’s Oscar win for Training Day) and this film isn’t going to show up on too many highlight reels, let’s say that. Antoine Fuqua’s directorial choices over the journey have ranged from generally acceptable ( Training Day, Southpaw) to mediocre ( King Arthur, The Magnificent Seven) to at least one excellent ( Olympus Has Fallen) and EQ2 (as it’s colloquially referred) sits comfortably in the entertaining-but-never-memorable category of his output. This isn’t a film with a rough edge, like the first film, this is a far cleaner enterprise both in execution and overall tone. The Equalizer 2 feels like Denzel is in cruise control. ![]() ![]() When McCall’s friend and former agency colleague, Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo) is killed in Brussels, McCall works with his former partner Dave York (Pedro Pascal) to solve the case, a case which has become far more personal than any preceding it. Through this interaction with the public, McCall uses his CIA training to deal out justice to those he sees as doing the wrong thing – everyone from kidnapped children, an elderly war survivor looking for a picture of his long-lost sister, to an abused call-girl and even a young black kid (Ashton Sanders) skimming the periphery of neighbourhood crime gangs, McCall puts the wrong to right with his stoic sense of duty and pride. Robert McCall (Washington) lives in upstate Massachusetts, in an urban apartment complex where he works as a Lyft driver taking people too and from appointments in his spare time. Where the first Equalizer felt torn from the pavement of Boston, the sequel spreads it wings internationally and sprinkles eurotrash flavour and covert subterfuge within its laconic style, although the bruising violence and strong-arm take-downs inflicted by the leading man feel heftier and more superheroic than reality might provide. Well, switch of the safeties lads, because Denzel once again takes to the mean streets of American society as he takes on not just a gaggle of injustices he witnesses, but the vengeance upon those who killed his friend and former work colleague. Sure, it was a worthwhile film for those who admire Washington’s getting-his-hands-dirty vigilante justice routine, but it never spoke to me as much more than a run-of-the-mill Taken variant in which an ageing movie star puts to use his considerable screen presence to dole out violent brutality to a clutch of deserving douchebags. I’ll bite: I wasn’t one of the throngs of people clamouring to see a sequel to Denzel Washington’s slow-burn 2014 thriller retooling of the classic 80’s show, The Equalizer. Synopsis: When a former colleague and friend is brutally killed while on assignment overseas, Robert McCall uses his special set of skills to unravel the mystery behind her death and bring her assailants to justice. ![]() Principal Cast : Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Ashton Sanders, Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo, Sakina Jaffrey, Jonathan Scarfe, Adam Karst, Kazy Tauginas, Garrett Golden, Orson Bean. ![]()
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