THE EQUALIZER 2 - Social Justice Assassin

Sometimes you go to a certain kind of movie because you're following an ongoing franchise, sometimes it's because a popular property that you're invested in is getting a compelling cinematic adaptation, sometimes you're a fan of a particular actor or director, or sometimes you're just in a foul mood and want to go watch someone dispatch violent justice in an unapolagetic "dad movie."

And sometimes it's kinda all of the above?

Ok, full disclosure, I don't know much about the original Equalizer other than it was apparently a popular television series and that it made for a great gag in The Wolf of Wall Street, but it certainly had a dynamite hook. The recent films borrow the basic premise (an ex-military man moonlights as a private detective to help out the less fortunate), but grounds the equalizing Robert McCall as both a widow very much in the throes of grief and a man who's OCD functions similarly to modern interpretations of Sherlock Holmes where obsessive behavior allows our hero to discern what "out of place thing" clues them in to solving the central mystery or gain the tactical edge in a fight.

The movies also add a healthy dose of director Antoine Fuqua's gritty, R-rated violence that would, I'm assuming, not have flown on 1980's television.

As with the 2014 "original" film, The Equalizer 2 is about the high-wire act of balancing the intensity of Denzel Washington's central performance when in the midst of equalizing fools, the genuine warmth he displays towards those he befriends/helps, the socially-minded reasons for which McCall takes up a cause, and the rather lurid lengths the film will go toward showing the behavior of those upon whom McCall will descend (these movies are pretty nasty in their treatment of women). Fuqua has been an interesting director to watch in this way, showing fascination with the same mixture of stylish film-making and questionably tasteful subject matter that defined some of the best work of the late Tony Scott, but with different flourishes. When Fuqua misses, the results can be as ugly and dull as Olympus Has Fallen, but he's just as liable to deliver something as viscerally satisfying as Shooter, his remake of The Magnificent Seven, or, well, The Equalizer movies.

Because, as exploitative as this can feel at times, watching Washington go from encouraging a neighborhood kid to keep pursuing his art rather than falling in with a local gang to declaring outright war on a private ex-military hit squad who killed his friend is darkly delightful. This chapter digs more into both the details of McCall's former life (without giving away too many explicit details, allowing the actors to show rather than having to tell) and the results of his having walked away from his old life. And the movie's plotting weaves various major threads together - along with a delightfully on-the-nose Dramatically Appropriate Weather motif of an approaching storm at the site where the film's showdown will take place - in a way that adds unexpected thematic and even emotional weight to a handful of codas.

Fuqua and Washington have been collaborating on projects as far back as 2001's Training Day, but neither have ever made a sequel before this. And, for all that a sequel to an R-rated "dad movie" would seem like an especially junky way to break that streak on first blush, the results show that there really is something here that both men felt drawn to explore. Which, if the thought of watching the man who played "The Hurricane" kill the hell outta bad guys during a hurricane appeals to you at all, means you are very much in luck. You won't be shocked by any of the story turns, but you may be surprised at how much you care about this avenging angel and the souls who cross his path.