The
Equalizer 2
Dir: Antoine Fuqua
2018
***
2014’s The Equalizer was surprisingly
good considering it was an adaptation of an old television show. Classically,
such adaptations saw their heyday back in the early 00s and even then very few
of them have aged well (although I can’t think of any off the top of my mind),
so by 2014 you would have thought most studios would have known better (ha! Who
am I kidding?). Sequels to adaptations of old television shows are usually even
worse, Mission Impossible is the only exception I can think of but even then it
took them five films to really perfect the formula. Denzel
Washington and director Antoine Fuqua are proving themselves to be a great pairing
and there is something about this particular franchise that is uniquely
appealing to me. This sequel isn’t great – there is still loads of room for
improvement – but I like the way it flows. Since the events of the first
film, Robert McCall (Washington) now lives in a diverse apartment complex in
urban Massachusetts. He is working as a taxi driver
and assists the less fortunate with the help of his close friend and former DIA
colleague, Susan Plummer. In the opening scene, McCall anonymously travels
to Istanbul by train to retrieve a local bookstore owner's daughter who was
kidnapped by her father. He also helps Sam Rubinstein, an elderly Holocaust
survivor who is looking for a painting of his sister; the two siblings were
separated when they were transported to different camps by the Nazis, but the
painting is found to be auctioned off and Sam cannot prove that he owns it.
After discovering that the apartment courtyard has been vandalised, McCall
accepts an offer from Miles Whittaker (Ashton Sanders), a young
resident with an artistic but troubled background, to repaint the walls. One
day, Susan (Melissa Leo reprising her character from the first film)
and DIA operative Dave York (Pedro Pascal), McCall's former teammate, are
called to investigate the apparent murder-suicide of an agency affiliate and
his wife in Brussels. When the two separate after reaching their hotel, Susan
is accosted and killed in an apparent robbery by two men with backpacks who got
off the elevator on her floor. When he receives the news, McCall begins to
investigate both her death and the case she was working on. After reviewing
elevator CCTV footage, McCall determines that while Susan could have been
simply the victim of a robbery, as the official account concluded, the
suspects' foreknowledge of her specific floor and the expertly-delivered fatal
stab wound suggest that she was specifically targeted. He also confirms that
the incident into which Susan was looking was merely staged to look like a
murder-suicide, and that Susan's death is probably connected to it. McCall
makes contact with York, who had thought him dead for years, and informs York
of his findings. During one of his shifts driving, McCall is attacked by a man
posing as a passenger. McCall kills the assailant and retrieves his phone.
Breaking through military-grade encryption, McCall discovers that his former
partner, York, was on the phone's call list. He visits York at his home and
confronts him, where York admits that he's now a mercenary after feeling used
and discarded by the government. York further divulges that he himself finished
Susan off (his two hired assailants failed to eliminate her), as she would have
figured out that he was behind the Brussels killing. McCall leaves the house
where York's three teammates – Kovac, Ari, and Resnik – are arriving across the
street. McCall promises to kill the entire team before escaping safely by
getting a ride from York's unsuspecting wife and children. Resnik and Ari head
to Susan's house to kill her husband Brian (played once more by Bill Pullman),
but McCall evacuates Brian first. York and Kovac break into McCall's apartment,
where Miles is starting the paint job he proposed to McCall. Monitoring via
webcams, McCall instructs Miles to hide in a hidden passage concealed behind a
book case; when York seems to close in on the passage's two-way mirror, McCall
phones him to taunt him. Miles emerges from hiding shortly after York and Kovac
seem to leave, but is captured as he opens the apartment's front door. Per his
taunts to York, McCall returns to his seaside hometown - now evacuated as a
hurricane approaches - and readies himself for York and his team. Kovac, Ari,
and Resnik arrive and begin searching the town in gale-force winds, as York
situates himself on the town's watchtower in a sniper's position. Kovac enters
a tackle shop and is killed with a harpoon gun. When Ari heads toward the seaside,
he is disturbed by pictures of Susan that he sees along the way; catching him
off guard, McCall butchers him with a knife, leaving him mortally wounded.
McCall then enters his late wife's old bakery to lure in Resnik, who is fatally
eviscerated in a flour explosion set off by his own stun
grenade. Enraged, York reveals that he has Miles tied up in the trunk of his
car and begins shooting at it to lure McCall out, but he runs out of bullets
after McCall foils his last shot. With the storm growing heavier, York is
knocked down by a gust of wind before being confronted by McCall atop the
tower. McCall gets the upper hand, kills York with a knife (stabbing him in the
same spot he stabbed Susan), and tosses him onto the rocks below, where the
ocean promptly washes away his body. Back in Massachusetts, Susan's information
about Sam's sister's painting actually helps McCall to reunite Sam with his
long-lost sister whom he always assumed was dead. Miles finishes repainting the
apartment complex, returns to school and focuses on his art. Having moved back
into his old house, McCall looks out towards the calm sea. The film is at its
best when we see McCall helping others in random acts. His character also has a
lot of depth to him and isn’t just an ex-operative with too much time on his
hands. The falls flat however when McCall delves into his past and is helped by
old friends. I believe the character should be a lone wolf to really shine
through. Much like the first film, the big showdown ending lets the story down.
The first film’s showdown took place in a Home and Garden store of all places
but at least it was inventive. The sequels showdown takes place in a
hurricane-hit coastal town and is one of the best examples of lots of money
spent on pointless CGI effects. The style of the films should be drama with
action – never action with drama – so the last few minutes undoes a lot of the
good work done in the first half. It is far from being a great thriller, far
from being a great drama and far from being a great action – but – there is
something uniquely likable about it, that I want to see more. Ditch the silly
action endings and I think this is a series with longevity.
