The Equalizer 2 review: Denzel Washington’s charm can only take the movie so far

Dir Antoine Fuqua, 121 mins, starring: Denzel Washington, Ashton Sanders, Pedro Pascal, Melissa Leo, Bill Pullman

Within the first few minutes of vigilante thriller sequel The Equalizer 2, Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) manages to drink a cup of tea and make philosophical chitchat aboard an Orient Express-like train in Turkey, kill three or four heavies, and retrieve a little girl who has been kidnapped by her estranged father.

It’s all in a day’s work for this most enigmatic of action heroes. McCall’s least attractive quality is his sadism. He enjoys breaking the fingers of his adversaries and tells some of them his only disappointment is that he can kill them just the once.

At the same time, he is a Proust-loving, art-appreciating good neighbour type who will clean the graffiti off the communal walls and offer paternal advice to a youngster attracted by the gangster life. He can be very violent indeed but at least he is always polite with it.

It’s a struggle to work out the point of the film. In the first Equalizer, Washington was working in a Homebase-like DIY store. Here, perhaps reflecting the harsh reality of the gig economy, he has a freelance job as an app-based taxi driver instead.

Between trips, he uses his vigilante, black op skills to perform random acts of kindness for strangers, whether rape victims or holocaust survivors – and to exact retribution on their behalf. His long-term game plan is an utter mystery. We know he is haunted by the death of his wife.

Behind the wheel, looking through his mirror at his passengers, he has a hint of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver – someone whose disgust at the world is fast mounting.

Washington has made a number of films with director Antoine Fuqua. The best of them (notably Training Day) draw on his ability to make even the sleaziest characters seem charismatic and heroic. He is such a commanding screen presence that audiences tend to root for him and give him the benefit of the doubt, even when he is behaving like a psychopath.

In the Equalizer thrillers, though, Washington’s character is an empty vessel. “Who are you, man?” the young artist he befriends ask him. It’s a question neither he nor the films can answer.

The plotting is deeply unsatisfactory. A wealthy businessman and his wife are killed in mysterious circumstances in Brussels. McCall’s old friend and fixer Susan (Melissa Leo) has gone to investigate, accompanied by his buddy and former partner, Dave (Pedro Pascal.) Further violence follows, some of it extremely close to home.

The film culminates with a prolonged, very portentous final battle in a seaside town in the middle of a hurricane. Some of the supporting actors – Pascal, Bill Pullman – are criminally underused.

Given McCall cares so little about himself anyway, it is hard for us to have much interest in what becomes of him either. Washington’s charm, charisma and machismo can only take the movie so far. As an action spectacle, The Equalizer 2 splutters into gear once or twice.

It has chases and shootouts interspersed with some nicely played scenes between the old vigilante and the young artist he mentors. The film, though, simply can’t plug the hollowness at its core.

The Equalizer 2 hits UK cinemas 17 August.