The Equalizer 2 (2018)

Starring: Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Bill Pullman, and Melissa Leo
Grade: A-

Obi-Wan Kenobi would be very disappointed in Dave York. How do you take the high ground and still manage to lose so convincingly?

Summary

On the Turkish Railway 400 kilometers from Istanbul, Robert McCall (Washington) is in disguise on a train reading Between the World and Me. He is secretly spying on a Turkish man on the train with his daughter. When the man goes into the train car with the closed bar, McCall follows and asks for hot water. The bartender tells McCall they are closed, but the man gets McCall what he wants. With the hot water, McCall gets his teabag ready before engaging in conversation with the guy. As they discuss McCall going to Turkey and the guy saying he can get anything he wants there, McCall brings up how he’s looking for an abusive man who kidnapped his own daughter and took her away from her American mother, implying it’s him. The guy says doing this would be dangerous, but McCall counters with an offer for the man to reconsider his decision. The guy leaves to go back to his friends, and McCall sets his watch. The guy sends his boys after McCall who swiftly takes them out and sits down with the guy before killing him too.

In Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter is delivered back to Grace (Tamara Hickey), the mother. The State Department doesn’t know a thing about how she got back. All they know is that 45 minutes before, someone delivered the girl to the desk downstairs.

It looks like Robert McCall is still putting in work.

Sometime after, McCall is working as a Lyft driver. He picks up regular customer Sam (Orson Bean) and drives him to the Copy Center. He’s an older guy and they have a good rapport. After going through many other shifts where he sees younger people applying for jobs, getting accepted into college, and a soldier going to the airport to head to Iraq, we see the happy McCall go back to his apartment and greeting neighbor Fatima (Sakina Jaffrey), promising to come to her potluck. That night, he reads in his chair. When he’s done, he puts it down, takes off his wedding ring, kisses it, and lays it on top of the book. In Brussels, Belgium, Calbert (Antoine de Lartigue) walks into his home to find his wife wounded. He turns and sees a group of armed men who shoot his wife and kill him, staging the scene to look like a murder-suicide before Calbert’s son gets home. Back in Boston, McCall does another Lyft and then goes to the bookstore to ask about a book he ordered. When the worker goes to find it, he sees Grace’s daughter in the back, who waves at him. He smiles but motions to stay quiet once Grace comes back with In Search of Lost Time. As you may have remembered from the first film, he was going through the list of “100 Books Everyone Should Read” on account of his deceased wife. This book is the last one on the list, and Grace knows it, encouraging him to start a new list. After paying for the book and going towards the door, he notes that their “For Sale” sign is down and inquires. Grace happily says the circumstances have changed, and they aren’t going anywhere now. After taking a man struggling with his sobriety back to the place that he picked him up at, McCall accepts another passenger. This time it’s a businessman of sorts who places an intoxicated woman in his backseat. The guy tips McCall extra to get her in her apartment. Something is fishy, and McCall notices her irregular breathing at a stoplight.

McCall goes back to the condo, and it’s filled with a bunch of douchey financial guys who are playing cards. McCall talks about the “girlfriend” of theirs, but the guy who answered the door explains she’s just an intern. Then, McCall says the credit card was invalid, so the guy yells at the other who paid for the Lyft. He gives McCall his credit card and tells him to pay himself whatever and add a nice tip. McCall changes the subject, asking if they care to know if the girl got home okay. The guy doesn’t care but humors him by asking. McCall plainly states she isn’t, and she’s in the hospital getting her stomach pumped. Instead of giving them a chance to do the right thing like usual, he demands anything they used to record what they did to her. As the guy goes over to lock the door behind him, McCall scans the room and sets his watch. He takes out everyone in the room, leaving just the original guy who called the Lyft. He gives the now crying guy a chance to call the cops to tell them everything that has happened there tonight before snapping the fingers on his left hand since the guy’s a righty. He reminds him the girl’s name is Amy before he leaves. Following this, McCall tells him to make sure to give him a five-star rating for his service. Once he gets back to his car, he sees the five stars on his phone. Following this, he goes back to his apartment but sees the light on. He enters only to find his good friend and former DIA colleague Susan (Leo), who let herself in. They share some soup together and discuss what happened in Turkey, Brian (Pullman), Brian’s new book, and McCall’s deceased wife. The last part finds McCall bringing up an anecdote about his wife, and he starts to reminisce about her until he stops in his tracks when he sees the look Susan gives him. As the two take a walk, she apologizes for showing up on McCall’s wife’s birthday but encourages him to go home to fill the hole in his heart. She notes that what he’s been doing for all these random people has been nice, but going home would be what his wife would have wanted.

Eventually, she takes a cab to the airport, as McCall ponders what to do next.

The next day, McCall sees Fatima’s garden destroyed, and it’s assumed it’s a bunch of kids. To help out, McCall tries to get the graffiti off the brick of the apartment complex himself. Teenage neighbor Miles (Ashton Sanders) sees McCall after work and tells him to have the apartment deal with it or hire a painting company, but McCall sees it as his duty to help for free and get it done. Miles offers to do it for $350 as he fancies himself an artist since he goes to Bridgeview Arts. When McCall asks why he’s not in school at the moment, he says he’s not their everyday, implying he’s dealing on the side. McCall turns down Miles’s offer. Later, Miles brings his price down to $250, so McCall agrees but only if he works on it after he comes back from school, which basically forces him to go more. Miles agrees and heads out, with McCall reminding him to stay off the streets. Elsewhere, Susan is on video call with a co-worker and Dave York (Pascal). They discuss the situation with Calbert, who Dave didn’t know was working with them. Brian interrupts for the moment to ask Susan how he looks before he leaves the house, and she tells him to where a tie, which he has in his pocket. Then, she asks Dave if he wants to go to Brussels with her, and he’s down. On a park bench, McCall sits with the elderly Sam, and Sam talks about his sister Magda and how they were separated and sent to different concentration camps during World War II. He never saw her again. Sixty years later when he was in Paris, he saw someone auctioning his painting of Magda for $12 million, but he couldn’t prove it. Now, he can, as he is in possession of a photograph of it in his old house. Just then, they are interrupted by some workers from the old person’s home, with one worker privately telling McCall that Sam is a lost cause. He has no records, no bill of sales, or anything to prove his claims. He just goes back to the same court only to be told the same thing again.

In Washington D.C., McCall is hanging with Brian and Susan. On the way out, he asks Susan to look into something for him. She says she will, but she has to make a trip to Brussels. He thought she retired, and she confirms this, though she says that it’s on the same level of McCall being supposedly dead. Back at home, McCall sees Miles painting the wall and engaging in conversation with Fatima after school. Back in Brussels, Susan and Dave investigate the crime scene at Calbert’s house, and it’s pretty brutal. In Boston, McCall drives Sam, and he sadly talks about how the judge barely paid any attention to him or the evidence he had. They go back to Sam’s place where he shows McCall a picture of his sister Magda and how his uncle commissioned the portrait for her 12th birthday, reminiscing about how beautiful the picture was. Susan calls McCall from Brussels and says the information she got on Sam’s situation is surprising and she’s sending the information to him. She hangs up just as Dave appears to say there was nothing wrong with Calbert’s marriage or anything that would indicate such violence. Something weird is going on here. When they get to the elevator, Dave checks his phone and sees data on Calbert’s hard drive just came in, but Susan tells him to wait until they get to the plane because she wants to get out of there. They go in the elevator and head to their separate rooms. Sadly, when she gets to her room, she’s attacked and killed by two men, though she puts up one hell of a fight.

Miles is finished the painting job and offers to “Picasso” things for free, which McCall appreciates. As they discuss Miles’s brother who was a boxer that got shot over his gym bag, McCall is interrupted by a phone call. It’s Brian telling him Susan was killed. Immediately, McCall heads out, leaving his book with Miles. At the funeral, Dave tries to express his grievances to Brian with a hand on the shoulder, but Brian is very removed. Afterwards, Brian talks with McCall about how the police in Brussels talk about how these robberies happen, but she didn’t wear jewelry. The only thing she did wear was her wedding ring, which he hands to McCall. At the moment, the agency is working with Interpol to try and help. They promised to find out who did it, but Brian is pretty hopeless at the moment. It’s a good thing he’s friends with Robert McCall.

My Thoughts:

The Equalizer 2 is another action-packed, intense, and satisfying addition to the franchise that continues to carry the legacy of Robert McCall well, showing us how he’s spent his days since he decided to become a hero for anyone who’s in need following the events of the first movie. Nevertheless, it is the weakest out of the trilogy. Don’t get it twisted, it’s still very good, but the answer is obvious.

The idea with The Equalizer 2 is that bigger means better. I don’t hate the idea of taking things international per say, but it does take a bit of getting used to since the first film did so well with how small it was. Here, we go to Turkey and Belgium, and more moving parts are included like agency corruption and political figures that complicate things way more than the first or third movie does. When you start doing stuff like this, you run the risk of turning the franchise into a Bourne or a Mission: Impossible film. Now, it’s not like a character like Robert McCall can’t succeed in this environment, as we know his background is basically that of guys like Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt, or John Wick, but what made The Equalizer so different from these franchises is because of its low-key style, heart, and neighborhood-friendly flavor. Then again, you have to consider the other side of the coin. It’s a dilemma that could stall a franchise like this. For the ever-important first sequel, the idea is to retain the heart of what made the first movie great but go bigger and better in terms of the action and story. The goal is to give us more insight into how Robert McCall used to be, especially because there is still a lot more to learn about his previous exploits, while evolving the character due to the circumstances he finds himself in. When you consider this, The Equalizer 2 does a particularly good job at what you kind of have to do. Is he still you’re friendly model citizen beloved by his neighbors? Yes, he is. He’s also not lost anymore. Though he still reads and lives by himself, there isn’t an emptiness in his personal life like how it noticeably was in The Equalizer. Though he’s always smiling, there’s a genuine happiness to what he’s doing now and rightfully so.

McCall has his purpose and he’s making a difference for those in need. He’s regularly going on missions as far as they take him. Saving a Boston bookkeeper’s daughter leads him all the way to Turkey. This isn’t out of the ordinary. McCall went all the way from Boston to the heart of Moscow to kill the head of the snake in Vladimir Pushkin at the end of The Equalizer. So, though this opening seems like a bit much, it very much aligns with who the character is and how far he will go. It’s just a reminder. Complimenting his daily exploits is his new job as a Lyft driver. Considering what happened in the home improvement store in the first movie, it would make sense as to why he wouldn’t be working there anymore. Plus, it just makes sense. First of all, it allows for him to enjoy life a little bit. It’s nice to see him smiling and how much he adores hearing the good news and goodwill of others as he drives because it shows that not all in the world is bad. There is still some hope in humanity. This isn’t the pessimism of something like Death Wish. Some people are still doing good. On the other hand, his work as a Lyft driver also allows him to oversee the citizens of the city and their problems. If someone doesn’t contact him for help, he can find a way to help others as we see with his interactions with those douchebags at the high-rise with the intern that they took advantage of, as well as McCall’s friendship with someone like Sam, a person he takes a personal interest in and calls in Susan’s help for. McCall gets information from Susan for a lot of his missions that go as far as the Turkey one, but McCall doesn’t lose what makes this all okay, and that’s helping the innocent.

McCall and this sequel still possess the heart of what makes this franchise what it is, despite how large-scale this story ends up becoming.

Also in this sequel’s defense, it was necessary to go about things on a larger scale to bridge the gap between this and The Equalizer 3. Otherwise, the location of Italy would have felt very out of place. It might have not been the plan to begin with, but when watching the three movies in succession, it connects very well. The Equalizer 2 takes some getting used to in comparison with its predecessor and teeters on the risk of being a retread of other spy/action films, but once the viewer gets their bearings and sees the direction this story is going in, they will enjoy it for what it is. It just may take a moment to get there.

As the story takes its shape, you will see why this is a mission Robert McCall must go through to evolve as a character and to move on in life.

By the time the climax happens, we get a glimpse of the ghost-like abilities of Robert McCall that were more than likely present during the character’s prime years ago. Even in a storm, McCall cannot be shaken nor afraid of any evil coming his way. Though you shouldn’t be surprised at this point, Denzel Washington delivers as McCall, a role he surely must enjoy playing. In the first movie, he tried to hide his abilities until they are unleashed. In The Equalizer 2, he is more confident than ever because he uses his skill to kill virtually every day, making him even more dangerous than before since he’s fully warmed up. Even so, it’s still a joy to watch him oversee Boston and try to guide those in need, highlighted by his relationship with Miles, a troubled young man with talent and a future, as long as he doesn’t throw it away. Admittedly, this time around McCall does get a bit more in-your-face with his advice to Miles, but someone like him needs it. McCall sees a young man who has a future, but only a little bit of influence from his criminal friends are enough for Miles to consider dropping everything he has going for him. McCall gives him chance after chance, and Miles does start to blossom, but as soon as McCall drops off a bit with daily interactions with him following Susan’s death, Miles tails off himself. It leads to the scene where McCall busts into a trap house with two guns pointed at everyone and demands Miles leave with him. When Miles tries to act tough with him, McCall loses it and points the gun at Miles to remind him “You have no idea what death is!”. It reminds me of Unforgiven. The Schofield Kid was all excited to be an outlaw and a killer, but as soon as he pulled that trigger and killed a man for the first time, he was shaken to his very core, with the reality of ending a man’s life setting in.

Though Miles never does pull the trigger on anyone, his criminal friends convince him to on account of his deceased brother, and he buys in until McCall steps in to save one more soul in need. McCall knows what death is and what it entails. Everyone thinks they know, but very few have experienced killing someone on a scale like McCall has. It’s something that changes you, and it can’t be undone once it happens. He can’t sit there and watch a troubled youth go down that path when he could be the one to stop Miles from making the worst decision of his life. In a later conversation with Dave, McCall states that “We all gotta pay for our sins”. When Dave asks McCall if he deserves to die for his own sins, McCall immediately responds with, “A hundred times over”. He knows he’s beyond saving, and he will pay for what he’s done. He’s come to this acceptance while still going about combatting evil, but he will not let the impressionable fall down the same path if he has any chance in stopping it. If Miles was a lost cause, McCall would have acted differently, as evidenced by every scene involving the corrupt people McCall crosses paths with. However, he knows Miles is still a good person and just needs to be jolted back to reality, which is why he goes as far as putting the gun in Miles’s hand while pointing it directly at himself, daring him to go through with it. Sure, a scene like this could be considered a tad bit overdramatic, but Washington is fully committed to the intensity that comes with being Robert McCall, and it works even when it tiptoes the line of pushing it. The same goes with his stern, fatherly-like instruction of hitting Miles’s hand away when he tries to grab some food by explaining how this isn’t his house. It works though because it becomes clear that Miles needs a mentor and some sort of guidance, and it pays off in dividends as we see how much McCall has influenced him and changed his future through his sternness as well as his understanding in the closing moments of the film.

Above all the killing, Robert McCall has still been a positive influence on his community, and that’s really what it’s all about.

The major issue with this sequel is Dave York. We all love Pedro Pascal, but his performance and his casting never really clicked with how the character is written. He doesn’t carry the wear and tear of someone who was apparently McCall’s partner back in the day. An aged, veteran actor would have aligned more with the part to allow the viewer to suspend its disbelief on the history between him and McCall. Pascal just looks too young and clean for the role, playing it more like someone who doesn’t have experience as a field agent, which is why he’s so cool with going about things the way he does with no remorse. The twist isn’t really a twist either. Right from when McCall shows up in the park to alert Dave that he’s still alive, the scene is framed like he’s guilty of something. Dave never convinces us otherwise. The moment in which McCall catches Dave with that phone call is still a good one, as Pascal’s “I just shit my pants” reaction was great, but it’s not this huge mystery that is suddenly uncovered because Pascal’s performance feels slimy just with the insincerity of his interactions with others. Maybe more scenes were needed for the character to try and trick us into believing in him being a good guy, but I don’t think it would have mattered based off the sample size given from Pascal’s performance. I bet you if Pascal had a retry at it now, he would nail it considering the streak he’s on. Sadly, as it stands, he was one of the biggest disappointments of this sequel. He just didn’t rise above the material, something Denzel Washington on the other hand always manages to do. Dave’s motivations were groan-inducing as well, with him talking about how “There are no good and bad people anymore, just unfortunates” and “one day, you’re an asset, the other you’re an afterthought” in a monologue that felt paraphrased out of the “bad guy in an action movie” handbook.

Noting how powerful the calm but intense back-and-forth conversation at the restaurant between Marton Csokas’s Teddy and McCall was in The Equalizer, we get a similar scene in this follow-up that is equally as awesome. With the battle lines drawn, McCall walks out of Dave’s house with him, and no one dares to make a move since Dave’s family are getting into the car to leave. They walk across the street, and McCall is faced with Dave’s three goons in Resnik, Ari, and Kovac. Everyone in this circle knows the endgame will be a battle to the death, just not here on this street corner. With this, McCall hits us with another powerful line with Washington’s expert delivery of pure badassery:

“The mistake you made was you killed my friend. So, I’m going to kill each and every one of you, and the only disappointment in it for me is that I only get to do it once.”

How beautiful is that?

Following this, he accepts a ride back into town from Dave’s wife, who has no idea what’s going on, and McCall even goes as far as hugging Dave’s daughter, picking her up while smiling at the villains and saying, “See you at work”, and putting her back in the car before driving off with them. He’s practically getting cocky with Dave, and you can’t help but love every single second of it. Dave, you fucked up. They do give Dave and his cronies some scenes to try to make them look threatening like the very cool infiltration of McCall’s house that finds Miles hidden behind a two-way mirror, with Dave staring right into it. Unfortunately, none of them feel as intimidating as Teddy in The Equalizer nor anyone from the Camorra in The Equalizer 3. It’s just like McCall says to Dave over the phone, “You’re going to war with me“. It’s not the other way around. Miles’s signature detailing the “Hand of God” seems more applicable with who McCall is and the skills he quietly possesses, which could be the reason as to why he resonates with it when seeing it. Despite the numbers advantage, Dave and company should be very afraid. You’ve given Robert McCall a reason. That’s all he needs.

The violence and action are still exactly what you would expect, and it’s glorious. The hand-to-hand combat scenes are great, and McCall has a lot more moments of viciousness and creativity in his kills, highlighted by a great climax where he leads the villains into a storm without a care in the world. The one move in particularly when he stabs Ari with two knives and then brings both of the weapons downwards to tear apart his torso was fucking insane, and I loved how McCall ruined Dave’s shot from the sniper by shooting out the tires of the car. That was genius! Have we ever seen something like that in an action movie? Don’t pass off McCall as some random hitman. He can read people and is quite intelligent, as evidenced by him sensing the killer sent after him disguised as a Lyft customer, which he outs him by driving past Logan Airport to see if he would notice when that was supposed to be the man’s destination. The stuff they think of to show off McCall’s abilities never gets old like the insight into how he investigates the crimes that ignite his actions. The prime example of this is when he starts to look into the Calbert crime scene by sitting at a dinner table and miming out the actions of what happened based off of the evidence. He imagines shooting himself in the manner that was described and then puts himself in the scene in his own head, coming to the realization that Calbert’s wife was shot by someone left-handed, which means someone else was in the room. Without having someone directly talk about McCall’s IQ or how he solves crimes to tell the viewer directly how smart our protagonist is, this quiet but introspective scene perfectly encapsulates how McCall analyzes crimes in his head, how differently he thinks in general, and how he’s clearly on another level.

You can call this nitpicking or even odd, but Washington having his hair this time around for the sequel was off-putting. A big part of this version of Robert McCall was the bald look. Someone with his OCD tendencies would probably like the clean-shaven look. Plus, it matched more with the “killer” side of his personality. Washington growing back his hair made the character give off a vibe of “Denzel Washington in an action movie” rather than the ground they established in the first Equalizer as the story of Robert McCall and the adventures he goes on to purge the evils that exist in this world. A detail like this seems minor on paper, but it makes the character much different this time around compared to how they established him previously. Personally, I think Washington even recognized this, which is why he shaved his head again for The Equalizer 3. Yes, minor details like a hairstyle can be that important to a character, as it can be intrinsically tied to him, depending on a film’s presentation of said character. Oddly enough, being bald is crucial to the look of this Robert McCall, and I will die on this hill.

In limited screentime, Bill Pullman does a great job playing the role of a husband lost without his wife. He’s not weeping uncontrollably, nor does he have to. He simply sends the message with a subtle stare, minimal words, and a convincing somberness that makes his grief feel genuine. He’s very much a husband in shock who hasn’t come to terms with such a devasting loss that came seemingly out of nowhere, and it’s very well done. The performance goes under the radar in the grand scheme of things and is forgotten about completely once the third movie rolls around, but fans of the trilogy as a whole will take notice at how good Pullman is as a supporting character in the expanded role that he plays here compared to the borderline cameo he has in the first movie.

Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer 2 is a very good sequel, albeit an imperfect one. The direction regarding the action sequences doesn’t miss a beat, and Denzel Washington is just as good as our hero like he was before. Though Melissa Leo’s Susan will be missed, her exit was a necessary evil to bring out the vengeance from Robert McCall while making this sequel a necessary story for the character to evolve. Though there are some missteps, and the villain side of things leave a bit left to be desired, seeing McCall do right by the people he loves will always be rewarding. By the time this story reaches its conclusion, our protagonist finally seems at peace, ending this chapter of his journey in a satisfying and complete manner. This part of his life can be put to rest, as his trek back to his old house meant everything.

However, with what he’s entrusted himself to do, his job isn’t over just yet. People in other countries still need someone like Robert McCall’s help and he may not even realize it. Of course, this all leads us to the magnificent finale that is The Equalizer 3, a film that makes the entirety of this entertaining trilogy worth it.