Movie: The Equalizer 2

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

Clash of Titans

Plot Overview

Robert "Mac" McCall (Denzel Washington) has ex-military written all over him; he's too well organized for civilian roots. He's not by disposition a man of letters, but his wife Vivienne had been reading the world's greatest 100 books, so he started, too, to have some­thing to discuss with her. She died on the 97th, and he was up to number 91 as of the 2014 movie, “The Equalizer.” He remains a little melancholy with­out her. He'd promised her to be a different kind of man, so he quit his—very hush hush—job and is now working as a Lyft driver in Boston. He assists the unfortunate from time to time, and with help from his old agency friend, Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo.)

The current movie opens with him reading his 99th listed book as he travels by train to a former haunt in Istanbul, Turkey, on a mission of mercy this time. Turning the pages marks the passage of time to the last book as he's “helping all these random people.” The pace of his hum­drum existence picks up (“Looks like there's coming a storm,”) how­ever, as Hurricane Frances is “moving up the eastern sea­board” to form a back­drop to an armed con­fron­tation in an evacuated town being ravaged by it. His former colleagues (“It's nothing personal”) are cleaning up loose ends, and he's the fag end.

Ideology

Frances is a real gully washer comparable to the great deluge insofar as the release of a flurry of pigeons is enough to put one in mind of Noah sending a raven and then a dove out of the ark in search of dry land. Noah and his three sons (with all their wives) were all that survived the world­wide flood. (Gen. 9:18-19) “And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.” Writer Bodie Hodge holds forth that: “Generally, from the Middle East in the land of Shinar (modern-day Iraq, where Babel was), Japheth's descendants went north toward Europe and Asia, Ham's went toward Africa, and Shem's remained in the Middle East” (183). In EQ2 three persons are given sanctuary in meta­phor­ical arks: a nine-year-old half-Turkish girl (Rhys Cote) is delivered anonymously to the Defense Dept. desk to await her worried American mother Grace (Tamara Hickey.) A soused intern Amy (Caroline Day) is deposited by her Lyft driver at Mass General to have her stomach pumped. And an African-American tenement dweller Miles Whittaker (Ashton Sanders) is secreted in a safe room when the baddies show up. These three vaguely evoke Noah's three sons.

There followed with Noah a critical incident where, Gen. 9:20-22, he got drunk on wine and was exposed in all his glory to his youngest son Ham who brazenly viewed him uncovered in his tent. Noah's other two sons, Shem and Japheth, covered him up, Gen. 9:23. Ham had violated him, which Noah sniffed out upon awakening, Gen. 9:24. Noah's curse puts Ham's youngest son Canaan in a position of servitude, Gen. 9:25. Noah's other two sons Shem, Gen. 9:26, and Japheth, Gen. 9:27, were blessed by Noah. The blessing of Shem was shared by Japheth who was to dwell in the tents of Shem, integration of two of the brothers as it were.

The servitude of Ham as passing to his youngest son Canaan also encompassed his eldest son Cush, see Gen. 10:6. Cush is Hebrew for black, whose descendants settled in Africa. Canaan is the youngest son of Ham carrying the curse on the whole family by a figure of speech called a synecdoche where a part stands for the whole. (Jasher 73:35) “For the Lord our God gave Ham the son of Noah, and his children and all his seed, as slaves to the children of Shem and to the children of Japheth, and unto their seed after them for slaves, forever.”

In EQ2 the girl rescued on the train carried a stuffed bunny representing the animals in the ark that later repopulated the earth. Mac retrieved all the “cell phones, cameras, and recording devices” from the rich baddies who'd drugged the intern, so her humiliation wouldn't get exposed. And Mac & black ‘brother’ Miles took upon them­selves to do the scut work of covering up the tenement's graffiti with­out any­body paying them for it (“Every­body complaining because nobody did what any­body could have done or should have done to begin with.”) Working Miles like a slave kept him from participating in gang violence, which would have done him no good.

Production Values

“” (2018) was sequel to the 2014 action flick “The Equalizer,” based in turn on the 1980's Equalizer TV series created by Michael Sloan & Richard Lindheim. It was directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by Richard Wenk. It stars Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, and Ashton Sanders. It capitalizes on the Holly­wood myth of three-letter agencies employing teams of highly trained super-assassins. When they were with­drawn from service, some of them couldn't handle a desk job and went private. One, however, became an amateur scholar. These two clash. Author Max Allan Collins comments:

Wasn't as if a hired killer couldn't be a lowlife piece of scum. Few paid assassins were the glamorous figures of espionage fiction or even the real-life cold-blooded, blue-collar hit men who did contract work for organized crime. (88)

In four years since transferring, Mac's former partner Dave York (Pedro Pascal) has gotten “fat,” he tells him, but I think he was just projecting. Mac him­self has porked out. He had to get a whole new war­drobe having over­flowed the former. He wears solid dark colors now to trick the eye, but the facial closeups as he's getting psyched for battle reveal some inconsistent pounds. Just saying. Other­wise the stunt doubles, camera work, and choreography are a wonder to behold. For that matter the whole cast from the least to the greatest did an excellent job.

MPAA rated it R for brutal violence through­out, language, and some drug content. The heroes and villains are all quite human. The sub­plots mesh well together.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

This is the rare sequel that's better than the original. They cranked up the juice to do it, which may make it dicey for younger viewers. I found it an enjoyable action flick with inter­woven dramatic themes. Not a classic but a winner nonetheless.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Five stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.

The Book of Jasher. Translated from the Hebrew into English (1840). Photo litho­graphic reprint of exact edition published by J.H. Parry & Co., Salt Lake City: 1887. Muskogee, OK: Artisan Pub., 1988. Print, Web.

Collins, Max Allan. Supreme Justice. Text copyright © 2014 Max Allan Collins. Seattle: Thomas & Mercer, 2013. Print.

Hodge, Bodie. Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2013. Print.