It all begins with the killing of that couple in Brussels by a trio of thugs, one of whom is revealed as Resnik (Jonathan Scarfe). Nor, in fact, is McCall much stressed by the plot contrived for him by Richard Wenk, the initial complications or which are explained away by the simplest (and most implausible) of explanations. He certainly isn’t stretched dramatically by the role. Perhaps “play” isn’t quite the right word, because unflappability comes so easily for the actor that he seems simply to glide through the movie without much effort, except for the occasional bout of running around or hand-to-hand combat. This makes it rather easy of Washington to play him. It’s hard to work up any concern for his wellbeing because-apart from his widower’s grief-McCall appears invincible. He can intuit what happened in any past situation simply by thinking intently about it (in one sequence he “transports” himself into a room where a couple has been murdered to understand how it happened.) When it comes to actual fighting, he can take care of four or five opponents without breaking a sweat (as he does when dealing out righteous punishment to a bunch of arrogant yuppies who’ve dumped a girl they’ve abused into his car). McCall is always one, two or three steps ahead of every opponent. In a coda Miles (Ashton Sanders), the neighborhood teen he’s taken under his wing to keep him from becoming a gangsta, is writing a comic book based on him, and describes his savior as a superhero. The major problem with “Equalizer 2,” though, is that Washington’s McCall doesn’t resemble a real human being at all. (His latest purchase from the store, incidentally, is the last of the hundred books he’s reading in memory of his late wife Vivienne-Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past.” If he’s anything like the rest of us, that should keep him busy for years to come.) In a prologue, we see him retrieving the daughter of a woman later shown to be the owner of his favorite bookstore the girl has been abducted by her father, a slimy Turkish fellow (Adam Karst), and McCall disguises himself as an Islamic scholar to accost the man on a train in Turkey, effortlessly dealing with the guy’s brutish companions in the process. In this second installment, Washington’s Robert McCall has embraced his role as a guardian angel for people in difficult situations, though unlike Edward Woodward in the television program, he doesn’t advertise for clients, instead aiding those he comes upon in his ordinary life (he’s now a Lyft driver, having apparently given up his job at the big home depot-style store from the first film). It is, however, a terrible disappointment, superior to its predecessor only visually, thanks to the slick cinematography of Oliver Wood, far preferable to Mauro Fiore’s in the first movie. I think it’s important to try to change that narrative and change the representation of exactly what something is supposed to be.The updating of the old TV show that Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington made a few years ago was obviously designed to provide a potential franchise for the actor-who until now has never even attempted a sequel to any of his films-and so “The Equalizer 2” comes as no surprise. Not that I’m purposefully trying to push that, but that just is what the character is. Miles is trying to find himself and deal with himself, as we all are in our daily lives, and we all have moments of vulnerability, whether it’s that we can see the vulnerability on our sleeves or whether we catch a glimpse. We put each other in these boxes, but we’re all so human as well. The white-collar white guy is supposed to look and act like this, Miles is supposed to act and look like this, or you know, this straight black dude is supposed to act like this, this woman, this race, so on and so forth. We all have perceptions or boxes that we put each other in. Is it important to you as an actor to depict that? But in both The Equalizer 2 and Moonlight, your characters stand in opposition to that by openly showing vulnerability. Culturally, there are so many expectations around black masculinity that trap young men in these hyper-masculine molds and stifle genuine emotional expression.
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