Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars
Bottom Line: A poorly developed plot interspersed with a bunch of pointless vignettes. Denzel is still Denzel, though.
“The Equalizer 2” starts out pretty strong with Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) kicking ass and taking names on a train to Istanbul. We are treated to McCall’s OCD tendencies and his smooth, calm fighting style against impossible odds. At this point, I believed I was in for a treat of a movie. The opening sequence is followed by a murder half way around the world that is obviously the set up for the main plot. It then moves to a montage of McCall driving people around Boston as a Lyft driver and helping out some of them with their problems. This is genuinely touching. But then he continues to be a Lyft driver and continues to be a Lyft driver and has moments with his friend Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo who I completely didn’t recognize and love) and continues to be a Lyft driver and beats some bros up and continues to be a Lyft driver and attempts to mentor a gang banger and continues to be a Lyft driver and FINALLY we get to the main plot of the woman and dude murdered in the second scene.
The biggest flaw in this movie is that the main plot is so poorly developed. We never learn why the people who were killed in the beginning had to die. It is extremely unclear why other people had to die to cover up the first murders besides a general “they were getting too close trope”. It is also frustrating that McCall basically solves the entire thing from his armchair at home instead of dashing around the world like he does in the opening scene. The main plot also uses the aforementioned gang banger (now reformed because McCall can do anything) in a way that makes zero difference at all to the story. Why they chose to include him in the main plot is beyond me. Oh, and there’s also a hurricane because why not? And the movie is two hours!
Denzel Washington is still fun to watch act and his “beat up the bad guys” scenes are fun to watch and well choreographed, but Denzel Washington and violence do not a good movie make. It is too bad this movie is so poor because the whole idea of an Equalizer is pretty good and you’d think there’s a lot of material to work with. Really, I think the movie would have been better off if McCall just had just driven around Boston and helped his fares for two hours.