The grand finale of the first Equalizer movie is one of the most sublimely silly sequences I’ve ever seen. Denzel Washington, starring as retired CIA black ops operative Robert McCall (though his character’s name is about as important as Liam Neeson’s in Taken, which, to wit, I have forgotten), destroys a crew of gun-toting Russian mobsters in the Home Depot knockoff “Home Mart,” taking them down one by one with all manner of home improvement tools. The fight is capped off by the familiar “duel in the rain” sequence that features in so many action movies, except this one is improbably, delightfully staged inside the Home Mart warehouse.
The Equalizer 2, which pairs Washington with director Antoine Fuqua once again, doesn’t quite reach those same heights. The setup is mostly the same, as McCall works a relatively mundane job during the day (this time he’s a Lyft driver) and then moonlights using his secret fighting skills to dispatch those who would threaten his friends and community. He’s never referred to as “the Equalizer” by those around him, but he might as well be, given that he’s just a cape away from being a full-fledged superhero.
The movie is at its best when it embraces the slightly goofy nature of McCall’s vigilantism. It’s why the first Equalizer film worked: Though McCall ended up singlehandedly defeating the Russian mob, his reason for doing so was as simple as protecting a single person. But The Equalizer 2 expands its scope, with McCall’s preoccupation with caring for the folks in his apartment complex nearly superseded by a larger political conspiracy featuring players from his past life. The result — while still an entertaining film about Denzel Washington saving the day — is that The Equalizer 2 ultimately suffers from trying to do too much.
Bigger and badder doesn’t necessarily mean better
Broadly speaking, The Equalizer 2 isn’t any more or less ridiculous than its predecessor — one of the movie’s C-plots involves a painting lost in the Holocaust, and the finale takes place during a hurricane — but the political machinations that McCall gets mixed up in don’t quite mesh with the image of the friendly neighborhood superhero that was established during the first film, and persists in McCall’s interest in his neighbors and Lyft passengers. The sequel’s lean into a slightly more “serious” tone is also reflected in the way Fuqua has largely abandoned the Sherlock Holmes-ian gimmick of having McCall piece together scenes in slow motion before tearing his opponents apart.
To the franchise’s credit, its self-awareness of its ridiculous premise hasn’t completely disappeared, as the idea of McCall’s antics getting him anointed as a superhero is briefly touched on, and Washington ups the amount of dad humor. He’s still clad in the quintessential dad wardrobe (high-waisted pants and neutral-tone collared shirts), and he’s looser with his sense of humor, shooting finger guns at his enemies and, in one of the film’s funniest scenes, making sure a few unfortunate souls don’t ruin his Lyft rating. (Tangentially, I have to wonder what kind of sponsorship deal was struck for the company to appear in the film; fake search engines abound, why not fake ride-hailing services?)
The problem is that that humor doesn’t carry through the entire film. To a certain extent, it can’t, given the bloody nature of The Equalizer’s premise, but the first film managed to keep things a bit lighter by making the stakes inherently home-based (hence the Home Mart-set showdown) and ensuring that the “equalizing” going on was on behalf of the people around McCall, not McCall himself.