Back in my day . . . bad guys didn’t leave so many loose ends!
Directed by: Antoine Fuckyou-ah, is that how he says it? Fuqua
Written by: Richard Wenk – Wait, seriously? Dick Wank? Poor bastard
Cast: Denzel, Melissa Leo, Pedro Pascal, Ashton Sanders
Robert McCall is an American badass. He’s a retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant – some of my favorite people are retired Marines, so naturally I was stoked to see this sequel. Oh, and another gentle reminder to all you punks who didn’t get the online memo, I now include spoilers in these reviews. Why? Because I said so. Now, shut up and listen while ‘ol Sergeant Swift educates you on The Equalizer 2.
The first Equalizer was all about establishing McCall as an old guy who just wanted to read the classics and mind his own business, but then the Russian mob or something crosses his path, and he’s like, damnit, can’t an old guy just read and shit? Or read while shitting, I guess. Anyway, that film ended with the basic set up of the old TV series
If you’ve seen the trailer for Equalizer 2, the opening sequence is pretty cool, where McCall makes Turkish delight out of a train car load full of dipshits straight out of central dipshit character casting. He does his little watch trick again, and he does it a bunch of times in the movie, but just under the amount where it got to be stupid.
McCall is back in Boston and driving a Lyft for a living now, because product placement makes movies happen. McCall is carting around good and sometimes broken people. Fuckayoua used this opportunity to showcase modern American struggles and just day to day stuff, which was a nice touch to tell tiny little stories within the story. Sure, it was like a veritable friggin Mr. Rogers Neighborhood where McCall basically comes across as a holier-than-though saint.
But, don’t worry, they explain why he is so pure and self righteous now. See, he used to be a killer for the #DeepState, I mean CYA, I mean CIA! And when he was told to kill, he didn’t hesitate to follow orders. His old partner and only friend, Susan (Leo) is the only one who knows he is even still alive. Everyone else in the CIA and the world thinks he is dead. Naturally the best way to stay hidden after you fake your own death is to set up shop a mere ten miles or so away from where you lived with your dead wife for years. Well, she wasn’t dead when he lived with her, although that gives me an idea for a new movie now. Anyone have a good agent?
McCall basically beats up assholes who he deems scumbags and rights wrongs, but when someone viciously kills his only friend, now he is beyond pissed and will have to kill those responsible . . . no matter where it leads him. Oh my God, if you can’t see that his former partner is the mastermind behind Susan’s murder, you haven’t been paying attention to all the cliche writing coming out of predictable Hollywood for the past several years.
His former partner, Dave (Pascal) and his little team of killers for hire becomes the target of McCall’s rage.
Oh, and what’s with the kid painting in the picture above? That Miles (Sanders) who is McCall’s latest project. He wants to instill lessons of self-reliance and pride in the kid who is running with some gangbangers now that Miles’ brother got slaughtered by a rival gang for merely standing on the wrong corner. I didn’t hate Miles, but when McCall confronts him at the gang hideout, after sticking guns in these hardened criminal faces, they just let them both walk away in peace. Bullshit!
Miles does a dumb thing. The Wet Works killers led by Dave kidnap him and there is a really kick ass climactic stand off in the middle of a hurricane that reminded me a bit of the old Dirty Harry movie with what’s her duck in it as the female partner who duh, dies, because most of his partners did.
Back to #EQ2 tho, McCall dispatches the assassins with a little help from God almighty. Thanks, God! And somehow McCall pushing sixty manages to scale a sniper tower without Dave seeing him. Unbelievable Bullshit!
Then, after he kills the badguys he returns home and just chills out in Boston, because the people that hired these killers to murder his friend and some poor family in Belgium are not his concern now. After all, the Deep State are just fine with him killing off a squad of their best guys and it’s not a problem that McCall is the biggest loose end since Stormy Daniels discovered poppers. It’s all good!
Disagree? Fight me! @FilmGrouch
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