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The Equalizer 2 dropped back in 2018 and its Denzels first ever sequel witch is absolutly wild when you think about his whole career so I decided to watch all three since this is one of my favorite actors, I remember watching the first one at the cinema although the second and third at home. Denzel has been making movies for decades and never did a part two until Robert McCall came back. The whole thing builds the story around McCall trying to figure out who killed his friend Susan, shes played by Melissa Leo and she gets murdered in Brussels while investigating some sketchy shit, turns out it was his own team that went rogue and now he has to kill every single one of them. I saw the betrayal coming from miles away because the movie kind of throws it in your face early on but that did not ruin anything for me, sometimes you just want to watch Denzel beat the crap out of people and this delivers on that. Antoine Fuqua directed again and he knows what hes doing, the action is brutal and feels very fast and agresive, you can feel the calculative rage, like when McCall clicks his stopwatch and starts mapping out the room before going to work on seven guys in thirty seconds, it almost cliche but Denzel makes it work. What I really liked about this sequel compared to the first one is how much more personal everything feels, in the first movie he was helping some random girl he met at a diner but here his actual best friend gets killed so the things are much more different, you can see it all over Denzels face even when hes not saying much.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3766354/
- Platform: TUBI
Rottentomatoes Rating
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McCalls working as a Lyft driver now witch sounds dumb on paper but it actually works because it lets him interact with regular people and get involved in there problems, like theres this young girl he drives home from a party and she tells him about these Wall Street bros who drugged her. The way he handles those guys is so satisfying to watch, he tracks them down to this penthouse and just destroys them while giving this calm lecture about how there daddys money is not going to save them tonight, one of them gets his nose broken and McCall does not even break a sweat to kick their ass. The opening scene on a train in Turkey sets everything up perfectly, McCalls sitting there with this ridiculous fake beard that looks like it came from a Halloween store and then he just wrecks an entire crew of kidnappers while classical music plays, its over the top as hell but Denzel sells it completely because his presence is just that strong. Melissa Leo does not get enough screen time but the scenes she has with Denzel are really good, the best one of the them is this place where they having dinner listening to music and you can tell this two have been friends for a long time and know each other well enough so when she dies you actually get to care about her because the movie took the time to make you care about her, character build up. Then starts the entire investigation where McCall goes back to the hotel to reconstruct the crime scene in his head, putting together the puzzle, he notices tiny details like elevator buttons and bullet angles that show you how smart this guy is, hes not just a killing machine, hes actually thinking three steps ahead of everyone else.
There is this aspect of the villain on the movie, Dave becomes too predictable but it still works because of how much history they have together, Dave was McCalls partner for seven years and they went through absolute hell side by side, but money and greed turned him into someone else entirely. Pedro Pascal in on this movie back in to 2018 where he was still not the big figure we all know now days, he plays Resnik who is part of the same crew and but he doesnt get a ton of screen time you can feel this menace coming off him, the final fight between him and McCall at the end is brutal with eyeballs getting stabbed and throats getting sliced before McCall throws his ass into the ocean. That scene where McCall confronts the whole team in the middle of the street and tells them Im going to kill each and every one of you but the only disappointment is I only get to do it once, is such a badass line is almost like he wants to be hell for them, he says it with this little smile like he already knows exactly how its going to end. The problem with the villain is that by the time we get to the end they all act like complete morons, these are supposed to be highly trained operators who were on McCalls level but they split up and wander into buildings alone witch makes zero tactical sense because it feels they basically running away from McCall instead of trying to trap him. One guy is trying to snipe people from a tower during a damn hurricane where you can not see shit and the winds blowing everything sideways, good luck measuring wind speed to take a shot, it just felt lazy to me. I wanted to see McCall actually struggle for once maybe get hurt or at least look like he might lose but he dominates everyone without much effort, its still fun to watch but it could have been more tense.
The subplot with Miles is probably my favorite part of the whole movie even though it has nothing to do with the main revenge plot, Miles is this young kid played by Ashton Sanders who did Moonlight and hes trying to stay out of gang life. McCall takes him under his wing and gives him work painting murals around the neighborhood, teaching him about making smart choices and not throwing his life away over dumb shit. The scene where Miles almost joins a gang and McCall shows up to stop him felt like how a father will protect his son but in a really rough way, dont get me wrong I know pointing guns is no parent ship advice but he makes the kid point a gun at his head and asks him if he really wants to be a killer, when Miles can not pull the trigger McCall yells at him about how he does not know what death really is and honestly sometimes you got to be like that, also consider this is a movie so its all fantasy. Its one of those moments where you realize how much pain McCalls carrying inside, he has seen so much violence and loss that he does not want this kid going down the same path, towards the end of the movie when Miles gets into art school it feels earned because we saw his whole journey. Theres also this side thing with an old Holocaust survivor trying to find a painting that belonged to his sister who died in the camps, McCall helps track it down and reunites the guy with his sister whos actually still alive, that was moving but honestly was a bit over the top. These side plots add so much heart to the movie and show a different side of McCall where he is not just out there breaking bones, he is actually trying to make peoples lives better even though he knows he is not going to change the world but with one person is enough for him.
At the end on that abandoned beach town during a hurricane is where everything goes completely off and the movie is about to blow your brain with action, McCalls old team comes after him thinking they can take him out but he already set up traps all over the place and starts picking them off one by one like he has been planing this for many years but in fact he didnt. He kills one dude with a harpoon gun, blows another guy up by filling a grain silo with flour and turning on the fans so it explodes when they toss a flashbang inside and just straight up cuts another guy into pieces with a knife while the winds howling ass at hundred miles per hour outside. The whole sequence looks amazing with rain and wind and waves smashing against buildings, director really knew how to use that environment to create chaos. I think the movie peak out when McCall finally kills Dave by stabbing him in the back of the neck and watching him fall off a cliff into the ocean, theres no satisfaction in it for McCall because this was his friend and you can see that conflict all over Denzels face, its both that mix of cool, calm but at the same time calculative assassin that makes Denzel character work just as in the first movie, like its everything he does, its a brand, going from the face, the watch, the fighting. The hurricane battle is pure entertainment even if the logic behind it has a lot of holes, after all again its a movie so downshift your brain a bit, watching Denzel set traps and outsmart his enemies in the middle of a massive storm is worth watching this movie. If you liked the first Equalizer you are going to love this one, its bigger and way more personal, Denzel Washington is still at the top of his game even in his sixties, I am giving this movie a very well earn 7 out of 10 because because of the pacing issues in the middle and the dumb villain tactics during the entire movie, dont get me wrong I do like this movie but its not that great, if you really think about it is just too focus on certains scenes, this is not American Gangster, but yes it delivers exactly what you want from a Denzel action movie.
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