Movie Breakdown: The Equalizer 2

Pre-Screening Stance:

Somehow someway Denzel Washington has never starred in a sequel.  This leads me to believe that he wouldn’t have done The Equalizer 2 unless he thought it would be a home run.  Here’s hoping it is.

Post-Screening Ramble:

Well, the great Denzel Washington finally did a sequel, but it was unfortunately not the right one.  Inside Man?  That could have been good.  Fences?  Maybe.  Virtuosity?  Definitely.  Instead he decided to follow up 2014’s The Equalizer, a modestly received action film (60% on RT) that I personally remember nothing about.  Hell, I barely remember anything about The Equalizer 2, and I just saw it.  Anyhow, the movie begins with a terrible-looking CG train ripping through the countryside.  On this choo choo is a bunch of unsavory types and Robert McCall (Denzel), a fella who likes to use violence as a way to help those who can’t help themselves.  Some things get said, some people get killed, and then Robert heads home, where he spends his days operating as a 5-star Lyft driver.  From here a local-but-possibly-also-international mystery attempts to unravel but it’s so nonsensical that it actually just further ravels, and then because that’s not enough clutter, there’s also a subplot featuring a kid that Robert takes under his wing.  He doesn’t teach him to kill people or anything like that, he just tries to get him into painting.  I guess it was director Antoine Fuqua’s way of shifting Robert from vengeance-seeker to more of an overall do-gooder.  Does it work?  No, but that’s par for the course since nothing in this film works.  It’s dumb, poorly shot, and there are zero good performances.  Skip forever.

One Last Thought:

What is up with the stopwatch?  Is that explained in the first movie?  Does this Robert guy log all of this somewhere?  He never seems to be on any sort of schedule, so I don’t get why he times his ass-beatings.