| Columbia Pictures | Release Date: July 20, 2018 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
12
Mixed:
28
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 18, 2018
Fuqua is a lyrical director who directed Washington to an Oscar in “Training Day.” He’s not afraid to spend time in the still darkness with McCall and likes to focus on small moody elements, like rain hitting the gutters. But he can also deliver red meat: A sequence in which McCall fights off a passenger in the back seat of his car is a mini-masterpiece of taut, sinewy direction.
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Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018
Mr. Washington is especially strong when he trusts his director, as he did with Tony Scott and does with Mr. Fuqua. Like all great actors, Mr. Washington commits to the performance, but every so often he also breathes fire, imbuing a scene with such shocking ferocity and bone-deep moral certitude that everything else falls blissfully away.
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Jul 18, 2018Movie NationJul 19, 2018
Charisma and old-fashioned talent, what we glibly file under the label “chemistry” when actors click with every single co-star they share a movie with, carry him through in The Equalizer 2, a dawdling thriller that sacrifices thrills, surprises and at times coherence for the sake of character.
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Jul 18, 2018
Jul 18, 2018
The franchise, however, feels less solid than Washington’s performance. There’s a formulaic quality to it, an aversion to the basics of world-building that gives The Equalizer 2 an outdated feel in a cinematic landscape where more attention is being paid to continuity and myth-making.
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Jul 20, 2018
It’s purely unintentional, but the little numeral dangling, like a broken, mangled finger, from the end of the title of The Equalizer 2 signals more than the fact that this is a sequel to the 2014 action thriller about a violent vigilante. It also lets you know that there are two, and only two, pleasures to be had here.
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Jul 18, 2018
Order and righteousness being the product of one great man, The Equalizer 2 is symptomatic of a confused time when people are collectively looking for invulnerable superheroes who don't so much as speak truth to injustice as beat the hell out of it, and its cathartic pleasures leave a bad taste.
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Jul 18, 2018
Jul 18, 2018
For a spell, this sequel to the 2014 hit intrigues because of its insistence on taking time to establish melancholy themes and thoughtful tone. But no amount of Denzel Washington’s weary authority is enough to distract from the fact that this overstuffed, ultimately unsatisfying potboiler merely dresses up its clichés in strained gravitas.
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The PlaylistJul 18, 2018
Fuqua’s movie, unqualified to create anything other than superficial poignancy, is empty, tiresome and uninteresting, satisfied with repeatedly communicating that if you exploit the innocent, harm the oppressed or abandon your code of conscience, Robert McCall will be there to set things right and severely punish you several times over.
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Jul 18, 2018
The Equalizer 2, which reunites Washington with director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter Richard Wenk, puts fewer disposable goons in McCall’s crosshairs, trading the original’s rote killing-up-the-ranks revenge campaign for some half-assed approximation of a murder mystery. Call it a lateral move for this unfortunate franchise.
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Jul 18, 2018
Washington...absolutely has a keen sense of his character. It’s there in every skeptical cock of his head, every sly, knowing grimace. But The Equalizer 2 is too much of a dull slog for any of that to pop with Washington’s usual ace charisma. The movie is a bog; Washington’s merely wading through it.
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