The Equalizer 2 (2018) * * *

Directed by:  Antoine Fuqua

Starring:  Denzel Washington, Melissa Leo, Bill Pullman, Pedro Pascal, Ashton Sanders, Orson Bean

Like its predecessor, The Equalizer 2 is a slick, polished action thriller elevated by Denzel Washington's performance in the title role.    Washington's Robert McCall is a man who observes, listens, and maintains calm even in the face of outfoxing four assassins in a hurricane.    He was once in the CIA, but that was many years ago, and for reasons never made clear his death was faked and he now tries to live a quiet, anonymous existence in Boston.     The quiet doesn't last long, because even as a Lyft driver, McCall takes it upon himself to right wrongs and provide justice to those who need it.   

The movie hints that such acts are ones of penance for McCall, or maybe they are just an excuse to keep the skills he learned in the CIA sharp.    He gets plenty of chances to do that, and his skills acquired over a long career put Liam Neeson's in the Taken series to shame.    Between two Equalizer films, McCall comes out of them with a small wound on his thigh as the worst of his injuries.    Forget Liam Neeson, maybe The Terminator could learn a thing or two from McCall.

The Equalizer 2 never overextends its reach.    It doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is.   Washington isn't looking for any awards season exposure for his work, he gives us a character who kicks ass and doesn't bother to take names.    Washington hints at a deeper history for McCall, and thankfully the movie doesn't expound on it much, but it gives McCall a human dimension.    The Equalizer has not one, but three different plots to juggle.    McCall not only has to deal with the violent death of one of the two people who knows he's still alive, but also an ordeal from an elderly frequent Lyft passenger who is trying to reclaim a painting stolen by the Nazis, and a wayward teen who lives in his apartment complex clearly headed toward a life of crime.  

McCall becomes a father figure to the teen (Sanders) and it would come as a surprise to no one that the kid would be taken hostage by the villains as leverage against McCall.    You can ask the Russian gangsters from the first film if such a thing would work, if there were any alive to tell you.    McCall is an instrument of violence, with a touch of the Denzel Washington charm which makes him among the most likable and accomplished actors ever.    We wind up caring enough to see McCall dispense his brand of justice, and also interested in what creative method he will use to kill his targets.    If McCall were dispatched to kill Bin Laden after 9/11, Bin Laden would've been dead by 9/14 in my estimation.