SUPER-secret do gooder Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is back to rack up the body count in the crime thriller “The Equalizer 2. ” Or how to kill a ton of bad guys with the latest gizmos and gadgets for free.
All the crime-fighting stuff used to slice and dice criminals into hamburger would have to have been donated pro bono as McCall has the best toys this side of Bruce Wayne.
I mean, really, who has a panic room stuffed inside their living room that with a push of a little blue button—hidden behind the bookshelf and one of a dozen hard bound books—gives you total safety when the bad guys come a calling with their high powered machine guns?
Or how about all of the video cameras and hidden microphones McCall has stashed all around his Boston-based apartment so he can see exactly where these “Stormtroopers” are when they are lying on his bed and guzzling down his ice-cold orange juice.
“Hey, put that back in the fridge when you are done!”
Director Antoine Fuqua returns to helm “The Equalizer 2” along with screenwriters Richard Wenk, Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim, the latter two from their TV series of the same name—and from the first “The Equalizer” film from 2014—which I am sorry to say, is a step above the story line of this continuation.
In the original, we are introduced to this “man of mystery” who gets his excitement in meeting up with a bunch of Russian mobsters and then sets a timer on his watch on how long it will take to kill each and every one of them in the most gruesome ways.
McCall timed himself at 16 seconds to finish off six heavily armed thugs.
Actually, it took him 22 seconds – off just a tad.
Of course, Boston must have been a completely inept police force and no Crime Scene Intelligence squad on hand that could have easily tracked down McCall using a high school chemistry set and a few band aids.
Rather in the film’s opening, it is four years later and we see this “Equalizer” dressed as a Muslim cleric on a fast moving train in Istanbul, Turkey beating up five criminals to rescue a kidnapped 12-year-old Bostonian girl.
We are told and shown nothing of the motives except … he’s a do-gooder.
The screenplay of “The Equalizer 2” is quite literally all over the pace. After McCall beats up the Turks, freeing little “Janey Jones” and returning her to her beleaguered Mother back in Boston one has to wonder how he managed to get this kidnapped youngster through US Customs and Board Patrol; she just happens to suddenly appear in the lobby of the Mother’s attorney one night, only to again show up at a local Boston bookstore the following morning as if nothing happened, smiling at and motioning to McCall to “shhh” with puckered lips.
It’s their little secret, don’t you know?
Always looking for ways to help his fellow citizens (sans cape and tights), McCall takes a job as a “driver for hire,” taking people around Boston to listen to their problems and see what he can do to right their wrongs.
In one instance, a 20-something woman is unceremoniously dumped into his car and clearly McCall can see she’s been drugged and “date raped” by four of Boston’s finest. Rather than taking her home, McCall drives her to the local hospital where she has her stomach pumped and a rape kit examination; then goes back to the men in question under the guise of not being paid for his services, where he punches each of them into submission.
He’s a do-gooder.
A decorated veteran, McCall takes a local “gang banger” Miles Whittaker (Ashton Sanders) under his “wing,” while visiting with old friends Brian Plummer (Bill Pullman) and his wife Susan (Melissa Leo). Not more than 11 minutes later, thugs break into the Plummer apartment while Brian is gone, beat Susan into submission and then strangle her.
The scenes of violence in “The Equalizer 2” are extreme and harken back to the two major set pieces from Washington’s “The Book of Eli” in 2010 when, as a blind prophet, he quickly eviscerates nearly one dozen of the worse of the worse post-apocalyptic criminals.
In “The Equalizer 2,” McCall has unlimited firepower and is intellectually six steps in front of his adversaries.
Fuqua uses an interesting visual presentation of dissecting McCall’s cerebral approach to his “soon-to-be victims,” more than once slowing down the action to a crawl and allowing the theater patron to see into the mind of this “Equalizer” as he quickly devises the attack pattern of each foe and
instantly reacts to first counter and then overcome each.
The “Equalizer” also has a nasty habit of walking right up to three or four criminals in the middle of the street and announces that he will be killing each and every one of them.
Remember, he is a do-gooder.
Denzel Washington is one of the finest, quality humans to ever step in front of a motion picture camera and his “Equalizer” is more than up to the task of stabbing, shooting and strangling each villain … then sitting back in his easy chair to relax and watch the sunrise.
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