THE EQUALIZER 2 ★★★ (15, 121 mins)
IN THE first outing for Denzel Washington’s vigilante Robert McCall he was working in a US DIY store that looked a bit like B&Q.
When we catch up with the super-tough retired special-ops veteran he is boosting his pension by working for an Uber-esque taxi service called Lyft. If his face popped up on your phone you’d be extra careful with that fiddly location pin.
But McCall isn’t doing this gig for the tips. Lyft gives him a chance to patrol his neighbourhood and get close to the lowlifes.
Here returning director Antoine Fuqua cuts between several plots. When a CIA agent is murdered in Paris, McCall suspects a sinister conspiracy.
He also has some amusing interactions with punters in his cab and keeps an eye on a talented young artist (Ashton Sanders) who is getting sucked into a life of crime.
The way these strands come together is a little predictable and the ending is not quite as memorable as the finale of the 2014 original where Denzel weaponised a bag of gravel while hunting down goons in the aisles of his hardware store.
The Oscar winner is possibly too good for this sort of nonsense but he impresses in the film’s more dramatic moments. He applies levels of shading to McCall that weren’t required in Edward Woodward’s 1980s TV series.