The Equalizer 2 Review

R: Brutal violence throughout, language and some drug contentSony, Columbia Pictures, Escape Artists2 Hrs and 5 MinutesDir: Antoine Fuqua | Writer: Richard WenkCast: Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Ashton Sanders, Melissa Leo, Bill Pullman
Robert McCall serves an unflinching justice for the exploited and oppressed - but how far will he go when that is someone he loves?THE GOODWith “The Equalizer 2”, Antoine Fuqua returns to the director’s chair as he maintains the exhilaration of the action sequences with his artistic vision. The action is clear, some of the shots are stylish, he still maintains McCall’s code of justice, and his leading man is as charming as usual.Denzel Washington can never half-ass a role. He’s Denzel Washington. No matter how bad or generic a movie is, you’ll still come out charmed by Denzel and his performance. I’ll say from firsthand experience that his previous film, “Roman J. Israel Esq” sucks, but Denzel’s performance was incredible. It didn’t deserve an Oscar nomination, but I can understand why he was nominated.  When Robert McCall takes down violent goons, you don’t get mad at him because he says something charming before he does so.As of now I’ve run out of positive things to say. I’m going to be blunt: this movie is hot garbage.THE BAD
“The Equalizer 2” had the potential to go one of two routes as an action sequel: it could’ve gone the “John Wick 2” route and expanded it’s universe and gone all out on the action, or it could’ve taken the “Kingsman 2” route and rehashed it’s previous premise, but still go balls-to-the-walls with the action. Surprisingly, it does neither and instead does nothing. “The Equalizer 2” is the cinematic equivalent to seeing your cool friend resting on a massage chair for two hours and when you ask if he’s going to do anything cool he responds with, “Yeah, sure whenever I feel like it.” It may be a weird and specific analogy, but the way this film carries itself by doing absolutely nothing but have badass Robert McCall be a model citizen for two hours and sometimes participating in his own action narrative justifies my claim.Remember this scene from “The Incredibles”?
That is me with “The Equalizer 2” in a nutshell.The 1985 “Equalizer” show worked in the same way “Kim Possible” did where you would call him, beep him, if you wanna reach him, and then he took care of any issue that you had. You think that was just a joke? No, that was the original synopsis of the series. You call Robert McCall who has his own hotline, tell him your issue, and then he’s right there to solve it no matter what the problem may be. Screenwriter Richard Wenk could’ve easily abided to the material for this sequel since he had forgotten to do it in the predecessor, but what does he do instead? He gives us Robert McCall as a Lyft driver, and if you’re complaining loud enough about what goes on in your life, he’ll take matters into his own hands.
After a while it shifts from McCall kicking ass as a cab driver to “The Good Deeds of Robert McCall” where he spends most of his time taking care of the people who live in his apartment building such as: a woman who tends to her garden, an old man whose sister was lost during the holocaust that he met during his Lyfts, and this teenage boy trying to act all hood so he can make money for his family when he is a standup artist, with the latter being the more dominant force to the “story”. Because that’s what we expect when we walk into “The Equalizer 2” - an entire subplot dedicated to McCall getting Chiron from "Moonlight" off the streets and shaping him to be a humbled young man.
Occasionally, it centers on this action plot where McCall is solving the murder of a friend played by Melissa Leo, but you can easily figure out who was behind it just by looking at the names of the cast members. Seriously, write your guess in the comment section below about who you think the antagonist is and you’ll most likely be correct. Even after Leo’s character gets killed off, there is no real urgency to the story when logistically there should be. The movie spends near 40 minutes of twiddling it’s thumbs and right when you think the story finally kicked off, it goes back to twiddling it’s thumbs again.Absolutely nothing happens for a good majority of the movie except Robert being a good influence to his community. There isn’t any development of his character at all for he’s just merely Denzel Washington as his charming self. We’ve seen him play this type of role again and again and with this sequel, McCall has less of a personality than ever. The movie is just riding off the charm of Washington than the action itself and it suffers from that. “Roman J. Israel Esq.” suffered from that as well because the script was way too incoherent to carry a constructive narrative. What carried movies such “Fences” and “The Magnificent Seven”? Not just Denzel Washington, but the ensemble cast. “Flight” is an example of a movie that had Washington as the sole selling force, but the character he played and the story itself carried it as well. Here, there is no structured narrative, so you’re just watching Denzel Washington interact with a bunch of randos for two hours with the occasional “who done it?” action narrative thrown in as more of a subplot than the prominent story.  
With “The Equalizer 2” being director Antoine Fuqua and actor Denzel Washington’s first sequel, it is very disappointing to see the lack of effort that was put into the movie, especially by artists of their caliber. It sucks to see Fuqua on a losing streak for his last objectively good movie was “Olympus Has Fallen”; Washington’s last good movie was “Fences”. This is not a sequel made from inspiration, but instead a sequel made by committee. It hurts to say this, but this is mostly a dull cash grab. Fuqua’s direction is cool but the action is sparse. What hurts the most is how strong the movie opens. You see McCall’s infamous stopwatch as he counts how fast he can kick ass but you never see it again. From there on out, he just takes out baddies willy-nilly without the stopwatch. Because of this, the movie loses the speciality of why the audience thinks of McCall as a badass.THE RENDYIf there is anything I appreciate this movie for doing, it’s unintentionally ripping off the game Fortnite for its climatic sequence. Seriously, the climax to this movie takes place at a harbor during a storm where it’s an all-out manhunt in the midst of houses while the storm actually does damage to characters on screen. It is relatively cool and violently gory just like its predecessor but, again, has no actual build up to it and by that point you’re already mentally clocked out due to the lack of story and action elements led up to that sequence.LAST STATEMENTWhile Washington still manages to maintain his charm, “The Equalizer 2” lacks any ounce of narrative structure and consistent action resulting in this unnecessary sequel to be dull, pretentious, and mostly disposable.Rating: 1.5/5 | 32%Super Scene: McCall Harbor