Movie Review: ‘The Equalizer 2’ Traps A Great Character In A Half Decent Story

by Nathan Ligon | Jul 20, 2018 | Featured, Movie Reviews, Movies | 0 comments

Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington have a pretty extensive relationship going at this point. The best of their collaborations is still ‘Training Day’, but a few years ago their movie ‘The Equalizer’ made quite a bit of a splash around the world. It was a middle budget action flick with a righteous bad ass named McCall (Washington) breaking people to bits in 30 seconds and then going to a coffee shop to read his book. In the sequel, McCall is still reading books, but he’s not going to the coffee shop.

After all the horrors of his life, McCall has decided to drive people around for Lyft, and try to save the lives of the lost souls around town. Which leads to loads of subplots throughout the film. Some are better than others, but these subplots are really the heart of the movie. The main story involves a family getting killed by some assassins and then those assassins kill the wrong person. Then McCall goes medieval on some ass.

Sadly, the plot is filled with some pretty glaring plot holes and story threads that seem important at first, but turn out to not be worth the films time. Luckily, the threads that are worth the writer seeing them to fruition are pretty entertaining. And some of the subplots give Denzel a real opportunity to shine. Which truly seems like the bigger point here.

Fuqua has crafted a character that Denzel can keep coming back to. It’s a character that is both a bad ass at hand to hand combat and a man prone to preaching important monologues to whoever is the newest project. This allows the actor the opportunity to entertain on multiple fronts. It doesn’t make this a great movie or particularly memorable, but it is entertaining.

I’m sure we will see more of McCall down the road, and that’s a good thing. He’s a multifaceted character that is worthy of deeper exploration. I just hope that the story surrounding him is a little better next time.

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Nathan Ligon

Film / Theater / Music Critic at Red Carpet Crash

The son of Executive Producer Jon Ligon, Nathan has spent his life in the company of filmmakers and some of the best musicians in Dallas, TX. He has since become a highly viewed critic and short filmmaker for Red Carpet Crash and Shot & Cut Films.