‘Equalizer 2’ isn’t as good as the first one, but it’s still fun

Posted on July 27, 2018

By MARK VIOLA

When actor Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua team up good things tend to happen. The partnership began in 2001 with “Training Day,” a film that earned Washington an Academy Award for Best Actor and made a lot of people, myself included, take notice of a talented director. Since then, the pair worked together on 2014’s “Equalizer” and 2016’s “The Magnificent Seven.” Now, they’re back again in the first sequel for either of them, “Equalizer 2.”

The first “Equalizer” was a bloody, R-rated action film with a wonderful sense of style and a great lead performance from Washington as Robert McCall, a former CIA operative who was trying to put a violent past behind him by living a simple, quiet life spending his days working at a big-box store and his nights reading alone at a diner.

Of course, things couldn’t stay quiet forever, especially when Robert inadvertently starts a war with the Russian mob after helping a prostitute. The first film ends with Robert embracing the good he can do with his skills and becoming the Equalizer, who will help those in need.

“Equalizer 2” is another fun — and bloody — adventure with Robert, and while it isn’t as good as the original on just about every level, it does deliver mostly what we would want from an “Equalizer” sequel: Denzel Washington killing a bunch of people who deserve it. I give Fuqua, who also wrote both films, credit for not trying to make a carbon copy of “Equalizer,” but the various decisions he makes from a story-telling perspective here are simply not as interesting as they were the first time around.

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