Denzel Washington had never done a sequel before.  That is an amazing fact in the world that we live in.  It seems as if everything is a sequel these days.  Well, that streak was broken with The Equalizer 2, which does not live up to the original film.

Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is one of those guys who just is out to help people.  And he does it in a real bad ass way.  Denzel is really good in this role and it is cool seeing him being the warrior that this character is.

Unfortunately, the story is scattered too much and the first hour or so of The Equalizer 2 is deadly dull.  Then it seemed as if the second half of the film tried to make up for the boredom by going way over the top in violence and stupid action movie cliches and situations.

McCall has a friend (Melissa Leo) who winds up a victim of a violent death (although my favorite part of the beginning of the movie was when she was being attacked and she was fighting back.  She was a force of nature).  This send McCall out for not only justice but revenge.

There were too many sub plots in this movie and I did not care much about them.  The best one involved a young kid (Ashton Sanders) and his painting, but he becomes way too involved in the silly third act battle.

In that third act, I thought the villains did so many stupid things that they deserved what was coming to them.

Director Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington have worked together several other times (4, I believe) but this is not the strongest of the occasions.  Again, it is not terrible overall, but it is not that good either.  Certainly not in Denzel Washington level.

2.6 stars