Movie Review—The Equalizer 2

The Equalizer 2

by Peter J. O'Connell 

The Equalizer 2, Released July 2018. Runtime: 121 mins. MPAA Rating: R.

What do you get when you cross a Sidney Poitier character with a Charles Bronson character? You get a warm and caring gentleman who is a cold and relentless vigilante. You get Robert McCall, as played by Denzel Washington in The Equalizer 2, sequel to The Equalizer (2014), both directed by Antoine Fuqua.

McCall is a former Marine and government black ops agent who now lives a quiert life in Boston. He is a widower and in a special kind of retirement—almost everyone thinks that he is dead. The only ones who know otherwise are a couple, Brian (Bill Pullman) and Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo), who used to work with him in the Agency. 

McCall, who has a mild case of OCD, reads classic novels in his modest apartment and works as a drtiver for Lyft. (In The Equalizer he worked for Home Depot.) He shows his warm side by aiding  a Muslim woman (Sakina Jaffrey) trying to grow a garden, conveying a Holocaust survivor (Orson Bean) to various places, and mentoring Miles (Ashton Sanders), an African-American youth. 

McCall shows his vigilante side by rescuing a kidnapped child out of Turkey and wreaking retribution on some rich guys who have abused a woman. McCall's OCD manifests itself in his desire to deal with baddies with great alacrity, usually in about 30 seconds. To achieve this goal, he uses anything at hand as a weapon—even a credit card—and intense brutality. 

It is a tribute to Washington as an actor that he can make his character's coldness seem cool through his delivery of such lines as: “I'm going to kill each and every one of you, and the only disappointment is I only get to do it once.” Or his demand to another “whupped” bunch of baddies that they give him a high rating on Lyft!

McCall's skills are tested to the max after Susan Plummer is murdered in Brussels while working on a case with Dave York (Pedro Pascal), another former Agency colleague of McCall's. Twists and turns—not hard to guess--and, of course, much violence follow, including some directed at Miles, leading up to a truly spectacular climax in a deserted seaside town during a hurricane. 

Denzel Washington, now 63, an actor of great assurance who is capable of showing great sensitivity, commands the screen by his charisma just as his character commands his scenes by his skills. Ashton Sanders as young Miles is excellent, as he was in Moonlight (2016). Director Fuqua, like Robert McCall, handles matters with flamboyant aplomb, using different speeds, off-kilter angles, and seriously close close-ups. The Equalizer 2 may not add up to a movie masterpiece, but it does provide an exciting and entertaining two hours in the dark.