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The original film was your typical good guy not wanting any trouble, but finds it anyways when he tries to protect a young girl. The bad guys don't know how dangerous he is, but the audience does so we get to enjoy the death and destruction he brings upon those unwitting victims. I don't know who asked for a sequel to such a film, but we got one.
We open with a fight that serves no purpose on the story other than to show that Washington is bad-ass, something we already knew from the first film. We then get a montage of Washington being a lyft driver and when one girl enters his car, he recognizes the trauma she just endured from what looks like a bachelor party. Fight number two happens and it is yet again another sequence that has no affect on the story or plot. At this point it becomes very apparent that there was little to no story to tell here, so they open with an exciting fight scene and then we chug along until the producers think the audience is getting a little too sleepy and they throw in something to wake us up.
The story finally kicks in when someone is killed, but it is staged to look like a suicide. Melissa Leo and Pedro Pascal are sent to investigate and when she returns to her hotel room, she is killed. Washington takes it upon himself to get revenge on those responsible because they were friends. When the trailer for this film came out, I casually leaned over to my friend and predicted how it would end....ladies and gentlemen, it ended exactly how I predicted it. Not a good sign when the trailer gives away how telegraphed, generic and unimportant this film is.
One interesting sequence has Washington on the phone with a young guy who is in his apartment. The bad guys are coming to kill Washington, but he isn't there, it's just this kid. So Washington has to direct him where to go in the apartment to avoid the bad guys. Small bit of tension is sprinkled here and even though the sequence itself isn't anything to write home about, it stands out in an otherwise by the numbers flick.
While the film looks and acts the same as the original, the feeling is off. Maybe it was a lack of connection to the characters this time, but the revenge aspect didn't engage with me emotionally. The ending sequence changes this up a bit by having it take place outside during a Hurricane storm, but at that point you feel like you've been wasting a lot of your time.
The Equalizer 2
The original film was your typical good guy not wanting any trouble, but finds it anyways when he tries to protect a young girl. The bad guys don't know how dangerous he is, but the audience does so we get to enjoy the death and destruction he brings upon those unwitting victims. I don't know who asked for a sequel to such a film, but we got one.
We open with a fight that serves no purpose on the story other than to show that Washington is bad-ass, something we already knew from the first film. We then get a montage of Washington being a lyft driver and when one girl enters his car, he recognizes the trauma she just endured from what looks like a bachelor party. Fight number two happens and it is yet again another sequence that has no affect on the story or plot. At this point it becomes very apparent that there was little to no story to tell here, so they open with an exciting fight scene and then we chug along until the producers think the audience is getting a little too sleepy and they throw in something to wake us up.
The story finally kicks in when someone is killed, but it is staged to look like a suicide. Melissa Leo and Pedro Pascal are sent to investigate and when she returns to her hotel room, she is killed. Washington takes it upon himself to get revenge on those responsible because they were friends. When the trailer for this film came out, I casually leaned over to my friend and predicted how it would end....ladies and gentlemen, it ended exactly how I predicted it. Not a good sign when the trailer gives away how telegraphed, generic and unimportant this film is.
One interesting sequence has Washington on the phone with a young guy who is in his apartment. The bad guys are coming to kill Washington, but he isn't there, it's just this kid. So Washington has to direct him where to go in the apartment to avoid the bad guys. Small bit of tension is sprinkled here and even though the sequence itself isn't anything to write home about, it stands out in an otherwise by the numbers flick.
While the film looks and acts the same as the original, the feeling is off. Maybe it was a lack of connection to the characters this time, but the revenge aspect didn't engage with me emotionally. The ending sequence changes this up a bit by having it take place outside during a Hurricane storm, but at that point you feel like you've been wasting a lot of your time.