The Equalizer 2 (Review)
The Equalizer 2 = Not Very Good.
I’ll admit I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the first Equalizer movie, but since I love me some Denzel Washington I was willing to give The Equalizer 2 a fair chance. After all, Denzel has managed to carry most of the movies he’s been in no matter how bad they were and I did enjoy his last collaboration with director Antoine Fuqua (The Magnificent Seven remake). However, this is probably the first time I was actually bored during what should have been a high octane action movie. I didn’t hate The Equalizer 2, but it got dangerously close to that by the time the credits finally started to roll.
For those of you who didn’t see the first Equalizer, Washington plays a former CIA assassin/ soldier/ spy who is living a quiet life after his supposed death. Old habits die hard though and soon he finds himself bored stiff in his self-imposed retirement. What’s an ex professional killer supposed to do with his spare time (and a guilty conscience), become a cliche seeking redemption for his past sins, that’s what. Soon he finds himself picking up all sorts of odd jobs helping people who find themselves with problems that can’t be solved without tremendous violence. If that sounds familiar, that’s probably because it’s an adaptation of an old tv series by the same name. Oh, and it’s pretty much the basis of every good action flick from the past… Ever.
It’s easy to see from that description how The Equalizer 2 might not be the most impressive film of the summer, or even the year really. In fact, I’m feeling like it might actually be one of the worst action movies of 2018, but I’ll get to that later. First I want to take a moment to talk about what The Equalizer 2 got right. For one thing, it features some incredible fight scenes that are almost stomach-churning in their brutality. The downside is that these fights are almost too one-sided. No one stands a chance against him, which is cool but gets a little boring after the first two or three sequences. The casting is also pretty terrific as well. Of course, Washington is as good as ever (at least as good as he can be with such a one-dimensional character), but it’s Pedro Pascal (of Game of Thrones fame) who I was really excited to see on the big screen with him. Unfortunately, that’s where the good things about this movie end.
For a film that prides itself on a character that obsessively pays attention to details, The Equalizer 2 makes a ton of little mistakes. While none of them might be a big deal (in one scene Washington buys a book and the cashier tells him a flat rate with no tax included or even a price tag in sight), they slowly add up to the point where I caught myself saying “wait a minute” way too often. These little missteps end up undermining the character and the story to the point where it starts to lose all credibility by the end of it. Then again, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The real issue with The Equalizer 2 is the muddled screenplay by Richard Wenk. in the original series, the character Robert McCall would help a new person every week (kinda like The A-Team). Wenk tries his best to capture this spirit by having plenty of subplots featuring Washington helping all kinds of folks. However, these mini-stories dilute the story to the pointer where the act structure is pretty much non-existent by the end of the movie. If that doesn’t sound like a big deal, then imagine this: You get to the epic showdown between hero and villain and afterward you’re left wondering if that was all it had to offer. There’s no build to the climax, which means the stakes never feel like their being raised for any of the characters. It might not seem like a big deal, but trust me when I say that you will definitely feel it by the end of the film.
Then there are the supporting characters. While I was excited to see Pascal on the big screen again, his character is so basic that you can read him like a book. I won’t spoil it for you, but only because The Equalizer 2 pretty much does that on its own. Then there is the young “urban” youth that Washington takes under his wing, played by Ashton Sanders. Sanders isn’t half bad in the role, but that doesn’t stop the role from being pretty awful. In fact, it’s mostly used to voice what I must assume is Wenk’s disapproval of millennials. Washington berates the character none stop about how he shouldn’t complain about how hard his life is or how the “white man” is keeping him down. In fact, His attitude is pretty much summed up in this line: “Everyone complains that nobody did what anyone could have done.” Washington might as well have been saying, “darn kids and their hip-hop and tinder and social justice.”
While The Equalizer 2 didn’t strip me of my respect for Denzel Washington or my optimism when it comes to Antoine Fuqua movies, it did force me to let out an audible “ugh.” The Equalizer 2 comes dangerously close to being a complete disaster of a film. No matter how much I tried to like it, it continued going downhill. This is one movie that you can definitely wait to start streaming before you see it. Even then, I don’t think I would recommend wasting your time on it.
