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Canberra Today 14°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / ‘The Equalizer 2’ (MA) ***

Denzel Washington.

I’M prepared to take a punt and guess that there are more TV series sired by feature movies than vice versa. “The Equalizer” is in the vice versa group, conceived for TV in 1958 when it starred Edward Woodward, euthanised there as late as 2014.

The first “Equalizer” feature movie, released in that same year, starred Denzel Washington, just like this sequel. Antoine Fuqua directed both movies and Richard Wenk and Michael Sloan wrote both.

“The Equalizer 2” is an actioner built rather like a series episode, scarcely surprising since Sloan has been writing the “Equalizer” franchise since it was a baby (Wenk didn’t come on board until the first feature movie).

Playing main character Robert McCall, two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington in his 63rd year isn’t stretched in either acting or action departments. McCall has retired from clandestine do-gooding and now drives a Washington DC taxi. The world is over-populated by nasties so soon he’s unwillingly back in action to eradicate a few.

It’s routine actioner stuff, not too urgently paced and perhaps somewhat the better on that account, with agreeable tensions and conflicts that for those involved would be less than comfortable if they weren’t in a movie!

The climactic sequence, McCall alone against the bad guys in the middle of a savage storm battering the New England coast, is rather spectacular. There’s a lot of shooting before things get sorted out. Narratively ho hum, meteorologically extravagant. I bet the National Rifle Association endorses it.

At Capitol 6, Hoyts, Dendy and Limelight

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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