The Equalizer was one of those crowd pleasers that Denzel Washington makes between his more cerebral performance related films. Having been Oscar nominated in consecutive years’s for ‘Fences‘ and ‘Roman J Israel esq‘ Denzel does something which he’s not done in his forty years of acting……he’s made a sequel.
The Equalizer was based on the Edward Woodward 1980’s TV series about a shady ex-government agent helping out people in trouble with villainous types. Being TV it was a bit tame but the film version was a pretty brutal affair with a brutally violent Russian mafia villain played by Marton Czokas and it all came to a memorably climatic end in a DIY tools warehouse. Moderately budgeted at only $55m the film went on to make $192m worldwide. A sequel was assured and Denzel returns in the title role with director Antoine Fuqua again helming the film. He’s one of the foremost black directors working in Hollywood and the pair have worked together on a load of films previously including the politically correct, ‘The Magnificent Seven‘ remake and ‘Training Day’ for which Denzel won his second Oscar.
From the trailer it appears The Equalizer 2 follows Washington’s Robert McCall going after a bunch of what look like middle east thugs who kidnap and kill his friend from his government agency days. Now the first film was pretty unflinching in its violence but the trailer for the sequel looks like its taken things up a notch with stabbings, shootings, explosions and limbs being broken. It’s again been written by Richard Wenk who’s wrote a whole load of action films including The Equalizer, Jack Reacher, The Expendables 2, The Mechanic so his pedigree in this kind of thing is solid.
Film is released 20th July in the US and on the 17th August in the UK.
Here’s the trailer…….
