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THE EQUALIZER 2 (2018) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

THE EQUALIZER 2 (2018) movie

Genre | Action Thriller

Classification | MA 15+

Running time | 121 minutes

Released | 19 July 2018

cast

Denzel Washington ... Robert McCall
Bill Pullman ... Brian Plummer
Melissa Leo ... Susan Plummer
Pedro Pascal

director

Antoine Fuqua

writer

Richard Lindheim ... (characters)
Michael Sloan ... (characters)
Richard Wenk ... (screenplay)

cinematographer

Oliver Wood

music

Harry Gregson-Williams

film editor

Conrad Buff IV

box office result

Worldwide $? million

Australia $? million

North America $? million

the best dialogue

THE EQUALIZER 2 (2018) MOVIE IMAGES

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THE EQUALIZER 2 (2018) STORY SYNOPSIS

Denzel Washington returns as Robert McCall, one man determined to level the playing field against crime, corruption, tyranny and evil. In THE EQUALIZER 2, directed - once again - by long-time Washington collaborator Antoine Fuqua, Robert McCall is up against an enemy who've made the mistake of making their vendetta personal.

THE EQUALIZER 2 (2018) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty | Review date 19 July 2018
Pop Movee Rating ⭐½

Denzel Washington returns as Robert McCall, a man who is prepared to even the odds for people who simply aren’t able to defend themselves against the evils of the world…

It’s not unreasonable to suggest that a sequel to Washington’s 2014 film is unnecessary and there’s nothing that the film’s lead, nor returning director Antoine Fuqua, show the audience in the second film’s 121 minute running time that suggests otherwise.

Previously, Washington’s McCall was an oblique figure, whose motivation to help those in need was cloaked in the unspoken events of the past. Not so much in THE EQUALIZER 2. Series scribe Richard Wenk decides to flesh out McCall’s past and make it vital to the plot of the new film. This proves to be a mistake. The first film worked reasonably well because Robert McCall was enigmatic. Magicians becomes “Magician” because they want their audiences to be astounded by their feats. The whole concept of “Magic” becomes somewhat tiresome if the Magician decides he’s going to give you a commentary about how he developed every trick. That’s what’s on offer with THE EQUALIZER 2.

Much of what’s wrong with film lies in the Wenk’s story…

Let’s be honest, Wenk is something of a new-age Steven E. de Souza, the 1980s Action movie writer who delivered the likes of 48 HRS, COMMANDO, THE RUNNING MAN and DIE HARD. He also had a hand in the screenplays that brought audiences the Bruce Willis cinematic gem HUDSON HAWK, the turgid BEVERLY HILLS COP III and the much maligned Sylvester Stallone version of JUDGE DREDD!

Since 2011, Wenk has punched out screenplays for some okay Action flicks, such as the first EQUALIZER and another Washington/Fuqua collaboration, the remake of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. However, like his 1980s forebear, his delivered some very questionable work… Jason Statham’s remake of THE MECHANIC, THE EXPENDABLES 2, the lamentable COUNTDOWN and the Luc Besson collaboration RENEGADES.

Unfortunately, Wenk’s screenplay for THE EQUALIZER 2 falls firmly into the category of “questionable work”...

THE EQUALIZER 2 is not a coherent story. It exists as a series of largely disconnected sequences put together in an scattershot order, attempting to underpin whatever thematic aspirations that Wenk and Fuqua have decided to foist upon their unsuspecting audience.

Right from the film’s opening scenes, there’s a genuine sense of disconnect as the story jumps around from place-to-place pretending to be something that it isn’t.

The opening scenes, aboard a Turkey-bound train stretch all credibility, as Washington’s McCall has all but been transformed into one of Ethan Hunt’s IMPOSSIBLE MISSIONS FORCE team, disguised in Muslim dress and sporting the rather large beard that has become synonymous with the men of the Islamic faith. Sipping tea, McCall confronts a sharp-looking European man, surrounded by a group of rather burly colleagues. The man has kidnapped his own daughter to inflict stress and pain upon his American wife and is en route to the nation where East meets West and extradition warrants seem a little hard to enforce.

For those familiar with the first film, and its protagonist’s stock-in-trade action moves, the opening scene is both predictable and derivative. McCall sets the timer on his wrist watch and about thirty seconds later he’s taken down the entire group of burly men with a series of hard-hitting moves and improvised weapons. After an exchange between the kidnapper and McCall, the sequence cuts to a Boston law firm, a woman arriving at the front of the building in a taxi. She rushes up to the law firm’s offices and is reunited with her daughter, seen in the earlier scene on the train headed for Turkey. A confused lawyer emerges from his office claiming the girl was dropped off at the firm by an unknown person and not a government official in sight…

Viewers will have to be big Denzel Washington fans not to recoil at how incredulous the whole opening sequence is if given more than a fleeting thought. The biggest problem with the film’s prologue is that it moves the concept of “The Equalizer” and the character of Robert McCall far beyond previously established parameters.

The 2014 film was confined to the streets of Boston and, despite the presence of the Russian Mob, Washington’s McCall seemed like he could exist within the parameters of the city and not draw attention to himself because of his low-key demeanor. His existence made sense within the logic of the story. There is nothing low-key about the new film’s opening sequence and it makes McCall seem more like a globe-trotting American undercover agent than a retired military operative trying to stop a few Boston locals from being hassled by thugs.

Having pretty much trashed the version of McCall established by the 2014 film, Wenk and Fuqua then indulge their penchant for violent excess in the next sequence as a Brusells-based CIA agent is assassinated by unknown assailants.

The scene starts pretty but descends even further, as the agent’s wife is shot point-blank in the head as he is forced to watch from the other end of their dinner table. The agent then has a gun forced in his mouth and the trigger pulled by one of his attackers. Fuqua cuts away to show a mantle of family photos sprayed with the dead man’s blood and brains.

It’s hard to know what Fuqua thinks he’s doing with this type of scene. It seems to be violent for the sake of shock value. There’s a portion of the audience who will question his approach and feel alienated by so much violence so early in the film. McCall’s opening fight sequence and this double execution scene certainly create a sense of expectation that the violent interactions will continue to escalate throughout the course of the story.

It seems pretty clear that all parties concerned with the production of THE EQUALIZER 2 aren’t overly concerned with repositioning Denzel Washington’s career into a sympathetic, late fifties reluctant Action hero the like of which Liam Neeson has become over the last decade.

As astonishing as the tonal shift in the interpretation of McCall’s character is the haphazard manner he acts upon his return to Boston immediately following the film’s opening scenes. Where McCall was quite careful in the way he revealed his combat skills in the first film, he is brazen by comparison in this new outing. In one sequence he dismantles a group of misogynistic, “1980s Yuppie Wall Street” throwback tossers who’ve sexually assaulted a young woman. He breaks the fingers of the last of the group and tells him to make sure he gives him (McCall) a 5 star Lyft driver rating! Even assuming McCall works under an alias, inflicting the kind of physical damage he does, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that, sooner or later, someone in law enforcement is going to ask a couple of questions…

For whatever reason, Fuqua decides to employ the visual stylistic device where the camera is attached to the back of McCall’s car. After a while, it becomes downright distracting as scene-after-scene is introduced with this device. Once again, it’s hard to know what Fuqua was seeking to achieve with this other alerting the viewer to the fact that he’s cutting away to another scene...

Is there anything to recommend this film?

The most interesting part of THE EQUALIZER 2 is also the part that is closest in tone to the first film and serves as an extension of the Chloe Grace Moretz story arc from the first film.

In the second film, McCall takes a young black teenager named Miles, played by Ashton Sanders, under his wing in an attempt to prevent him from becoming another gang-banger seduced the allure of fast money, designer drugs and false friendships.

Washington and Sanders share a scene that is an absolute knockout.

Viewers will be wondering what to make of it… Washington turns into a man of ferocious conviction, trying to stop Miles from making the biggest mistake of his young life, and suddenly the whole film comes to life. The problem is that it feels like an entirely different movie and as quickly as it comes to life it disappears again. Whether it was written that way or whether Washington, Sanders and Fuqua built up to it on set, the fact of the matter is that it almost makes THE EQUALIZER 2 worth sitting through the other 119 odd minutes just to see Washington do what he does in this one scene.

Too quickly though, the story meanders off on another series of tangents, opting to explore the far less interesting topic of McCall’s military past and the strange “whodunnit” involving the death of his friend Susan Plummer, returning from the first film, played by Melissa Leo.

While it’s easy to feel sorry for Leo’s character, spare a thought for poor old Bill Pullman…

At least Leo gets the chance to not “go out like a punk”, as Samuel L. Jackson requested of George Lucas when he found out Mace Windu would die in REVENGE OF THE SITH. Leo gives as good she gets as she is ambushed in her hotel room. Unfortunately, Wenk’s plot conspires against the character and doesn’t give her the “easy out” of being saved at the last moment.

Pullman, on the other hand, delivers just about the most lifeless performance by a living character in recent memory. Sure, his onscreen wife has just died, but it doesn’t get any better the longer the film goes. Pullman’s character - Brian - lingers well into the Final Act and, at one point, seems as though he will feature heavily during the climax. One minute his character is with McCall and the next he’s been left behind as the story, yet again, makes a dramatic swerve to set up an all-too-predictable action set-piece.

The Verdict...

Many viewers will remember the Edward Woodward 1980s version of THE EQUALIZER fondly. At times, it tackled some difficult subject matter, but it was television show made for a prime-time audience. The 2014 film had some visceral moments, but the inclusion of Denzel Washington legitimized the project and, no doubt, brought in viewers on the basis of his inclusion as the lead.

THE EQUALIZER 2 doesn’t have the benefit of being “new”. Audiences will appreciate the return of Washington, but will be confounded by the choppiness of the story. There’s just too many story threads, many of which don’t seem to make a lot of sense. The move away from the established core elements of the central character is a major problem. Denzel Washington is a tremendous actor, but only for a few fleeting moments is his talent able to shine through to lift the material to a level that engrosses and rewards the viewer for their patience. Robert McCall is meant to help those who have the odds stacked against them. Audiences may not be as concerned with the manner in which THE EQUALIZER 2 stacks the odds against McCall. At the end of the day, viewers already know he can take of himself and that’s the point this film seems to miss.