The Equalizer 2
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: July 20, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
50
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 43 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
28
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyAug 22, 2018
At base, these are meat-and-potatoes genre thrills, but the meat’s decently seasoned, and, even if there’s too much token foliage crowding the plate, it’s cute that they mind about presentation. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Simran HansAug 20, 2018
A climactic fight that takes place in the eye of a hurricane is appropriately silly but lacks a sense of fun. Read full review
60
Time OutMichael GingoldAug 10, 2018
Washington has the quiet authority, and Fuqua the stylistic chops, but the story they’re telling becomes more predictable as it goes along. Once it’s over, you won’t necessarily be itching for an Equalizer 3. Read full review
60
EmpireChris Hewitt (1)Jul 23, 2018
This hard-edged action thriller may not match the original, but Washington’s McCall is a compelling character, the kind you’d quite happily like to hang out with whether he’s busting heads or painting walls. Read full review
60
Rolling StonePeter TraversJul 20, 2018
The Equalizer 2 feels uneven and off balance. But not Washington. Despite his trashy trappings, there’s no one cooler to watch in action. Read full review
60
Vox Karen HanJul 19, 2018
The appeal of the Equalizer series is in watching the everyday — including Washington himself — turn deadly. And like its hero, The Equalizer 2 still has it where it counts. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJul 18, 2018
Even though the evil impulses of the villains feel rote and arbitrary, The Equalizer 2 is not without its pleasures. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJul 18, 2018
Fuqua's storytelling here isn't as expert and efficient as McCall is when he's forced into action, but it's good enough. Bottom line: He and The Equalizer 2 still deliver on their promise of a badass Denzel doing badass things for all the right reasons. Read full review
58
ConsequenceRandall ColburnJul 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 There’s a formulaic quality to it, an aversion to the basics of world-building that gives The Equalizer 2 an outdated feel in a cinematic landscape where more attention is being paid to continuity and myth-making. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanJul 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. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaJul 19, 2018
The film starts to feel like it’s more invested in selling the idea of the series rather than a film in and of itself. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshJul 19, 2018
The Equalizer 2 just doesn't deliver the thrills. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJul 18, 2018
Too bad. The trappings of The Equalizer 2 are first-rate — the star, the director, the central character, the concept — and they make for a movie that’s watchable and intermittently pleasing. But not enough time was spent getting the substance right. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTom RussoJul 18, 2018
Save for a couple of crisp standalone segments incorporated as tone-setters, Washington’s first-ever sequel is a narratively and visually muddled disappointment, one that regularly confuses numbing brutality with vicariously thrilling righteous vengeance. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineNiles SchwartzJul 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. Read full review
50
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlJul 18, 2018
It’s hard to appreciate the hero’s crafty planning when we can’t really make out what he’s crafted. Read full review
50
UproxxVince ManciniJul 18, 2018
In the past, this kind of character, who abhors swear words but kills with obvious relish, would’ve been positioned as an interesting contrast. In The Equalizer 2 it just feels like unexamined orthodoxy. It feels like the symptom of a very American kind of brain sickness. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonJul 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. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJul 18, 2018
Apart from the film’s occasional spasms of rousing, lightning-choreographed ultraviolence (a confrontation with an apartment full of date-raping finance bros is particularly great), the film is too enamored with its own morose righteousness to be very engaging. Read full review
45
Film Journal InternationalChris BarsantiJul 18, 2018
It’s strange that The Equalizer 2 is such a sluggish ride. Fuqua and Washington have developed a body of work over the years that is, if nothing else, reliably kinetic. But with Wenk’s pedestrian writing, there just isn’t much for Washington to work with here. Read full review
42
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJul 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. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd 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. Read full review
42
IndieWireDavid EhrlichJul 18, 2018
The good news is that the fans of Antoine Fuqua’s “The Equalizer” — a bland and pulpy 2014 riff on the ’80s TV series of the same name — are in for more of the same. The bad news is that the rest of us are, too. Read full review
40
We Got This CoveredLuke ParkerJul 19, 2018
This time around, Denzel’s “Equalizer” is less of a Robin Hood-like hero for the helpless, and more of a Travis Bickle-like vigilante, shooting his way through a murder caper that has neither the incentive nor the heart of its already forgettable precursor. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJul 19, 2018
Among the books that McCall carries with him is a volume of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”; we see the cover in pointed close-ups. That can serve as one of the hero’s life lessons. Take a pass on the movie and you avoid losing two hours. Read full review
40
Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsJul 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. Read full review
40
VarietyPeter DebrugeJul 18, 2018
Judging by the ponderous tone and pace, Fuqua thinks he’s making high art (likely aspiring to something existential like Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samouraï”), but this is a grisly exploitation movie at best. Read full review
40
The GuardianCharles BramescoJul 18, 2018
The Equalizer pictures operate under a false moral imperative, using the mission of cleaning up the streets as a cover for the same pat hyper-stylized, near-pornographic brutality. Read full review
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