The Equalizer 2 | 2018 | R | - 1.8.7

In this sequel to 2014's The Equalizer a vigilante and former CIA operative (Denzel Washington) hunts down the killers of one of his best friends. He travels through Turkey, Belgium and the US before he discovers the murderers and ensures justice is done. Also with Pedro Pascal, Ashton Sanders, Johnathan Scarfe, Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman. Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Several lines of dialogue are spoken in Yiddish, a Turkish dialect, an Arabic language, and French with some accompanied by English subtitles and others are left untranslated. [2:01]

SEX/NUDITY 1 - A man and a woman hug.
► A woman's open blouse reveals some ruffles, part of a bra strap and cleavage (she may have been raped; please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). Two women wear tights that accentuate their buttocks, thighs and lower legs. The women reveal cleavage in the necklines of their blouses. A man dances shirtless and we see his bare chest, back, arms and shoulders.

VIOLENCE/GORE 8 - During high winds, rain and flying debris, four men search for a man: one man climbs to the top of a tower and sets his automatic rifle on tripod legs while the other three men die (one of them sets off a smoke grenade in a large shed and we see a flash, another man is shot by a crossbow through the face and into a wall where he is pinned (he's dead, with his eyes open and a close-up of the point outside the shed shows that it is covered in blood), another man is rushed and stabbed several times (the blades becoming bloody) and when the fourth man finds the stabbed man dying, gasping, and bleeding from several cuts he curses and as he reaches a door, a loud explosion throws him backward and fills the screen with flames and a lot of smoke (we see the dead man on his back, with a widely sliced-open abdomen, charred and he gasps and dies). A man shoots out a junction box on a high pole beside a tower and a man on the tower shoots at a car where a teen boy is locked in the trunk; he misses once and hits the boy's thigh the next time, drawing some blood and then shoots out a taillight and aims for the trunk, but misses and a gust of wind blows the tower shooter to the edge, slamming his head against a railing (he recovers); the other man punches him and they fight with punches, knife strikes, throws, kicks, and grappling and one man uses a knife to gouge out one of the other man's eyes, stabs his shoulders, stabs him in the heart, stabs the back of the his neck and slits his neck from ear to ear before kicking the body into a bay (in close-up, the man's staring face bleeds from the eye, mouth, and neck before he gasps and dies).
► A man enters his home to find his wife crying and with her eyes, nose, and mouth bloody; she shudders as a man holds a gun to her head and two other men approach her husband, when the gunman fires into her head, which is now below the frame (we later see her bloody head in a bloody dinner plate over which she has slumped); another gunman sticks the barrel of a handgun into the husband's mouth, the camera pans up, and we hear a loud shot as we see blood splash on many framed photographs on a table. A flashback shows a woman lying against a wall with blood covering her forehead, face, throat, and the front of her blouse as a man stoops, holds her hand, and stabs her in the middle of the rib cage on one side and she gasps and dies.
► Three men attack a man and he breaks one man's arm, another man's knee, snaps two men's necks, and smashes the third man's voice box (we hear a lot of cracking and crunching and see several groupings of blood spots on the floor); the fourth man cries, and the man breaks his fingers with a loud crunch, telling him to call 911 and confess the crime against a woman. Three men attack a fourth man who kills all three; we hear crunching as the fourth man breaks three arms, slits two throats, stabs a man in the chest (we see some blood), and breaks a teapot over a man's head, drawing blood.
► A man in the back of a car pulls a long, wide knife on the driver, who begins speeding and swerving in traffic, leaving skid marks and crashing side-long into a parked car; the driver steers and fights the passenger, delivering elbow strikes and a broken forearm before he takes the knife away, he swerves for several seconds and the passenger shoots out the windshield with a pistol before the driver grabs the gun, pulls the attacker down into the front seat while driving and shoots him three times in the face below the frame; he later puts the body in the trunk and we see blood on one hand of the dead man and the camera cuts to the car burning beside an old building at a river.
► A man breaks into an apartment building where other men are holding a teen boy and arranging for him to sell drugs and kill the murderer of his brother; the first man strikes two armed men unconscious in the entrance to the building, he points two handguns at a group and demands a teen boy come with him; he takes the boy into the hallway, where the boy curses him and the man hands the boy a gun and says to shoot him between the eyes; the boy does not shoot, and the man sticks a gun barrel into the boy's mouth and then shouts toward him (the boy looks frightened). Two men shoot a highway patrolman dead when he approaches their car (we don't see blood).
► Two men follow a woman in an elevator to her hotel room where they grab her and slam her into the room walls, and onto the floor; one man smashes her face into a wall and the back of her head into the glass of a framed picture on another wall as she fights with fists, knees to the groin, and throws breaking tables and a desk.
► Two armed men break into an apartment as a teen boy in the back room speaks with someone on a phone and finds out how to push open a false wall and hide; the boy panics when the men look through a two-way mirror at him and when they leave the apartment the boy comes out and opens the front door to see the men pointing their guns at him; they put him in the trunk of their car, gagged with duct tape and tied at wrists and ankles.
► A man puts a gasping, drunken woman with a bloody mouth and open blouse into the back of a car (she may have been raped) and the driver says later that he took the woman to the hospital where doctors pumped her stomach.
► A woman and a man examine a bloody table top and a dinner plate full of blood and we see a bullet hole in a window. A man imagines a crime scene and we see a murder as a flashback in his imagination (we see a victim fall back against the top of his straight-back chair, dead, with his face covered in blood). We see a photo of a woman lying dead in the fetal position with blood on her blouse. Two men find a cell phone and when one man presses a button on it a duffle bag explodes with a lot of black smoke, sending broken bricks out the window and blowing out the entire floor of an apartment building (we don't see the injuries to the men but hear that they died). A man helps a teen boy out of a car trunk and ties a bandage around his thigh, where a bullet drew blood; the boy limps for a while and later says the bleeding stopped.
► A man accuses another man of being a paid assassin and he says, "I used to kill names on a piece of paper. Now, there is a price behind each name." A man says to four other men, "You killed my friend, so I'm gonna kill each and every one of you. And the only disappointment is that I only get to do it once." We hear that a teen boy's brother was shot and killed. Graffiti on a brick wall says "Gangs." A man is surprised when he learns that an old friend is not dead. A man tells another man that he and his sister were separated in WWII and sent to different concentration camps. A man sobs at the wake of his wife.
► A small town on a bay is hit with hurricane force winds that force people to evacuate. We hear that vandals left a courtyard garden torn apart and we see dirt spread over walkways and plants lying dead.
► A toilet flushes off-screen and a woman comes out of a room and tells a man that she urinated; he had his gun drawn, expecting an intruder, but lowers it and laughs.

LANGUAGE 7 - About 24 F-words and its derivatives, 15 scatological terms (1 not fully enunciated), 1 anatomical term, 3 mild obscenities, 1 derogatory term for African-Americans, name-calling (killer, liar, afterthought, Pops, Junior, Jackie Chan, Walmart paint), 1 religious profanity ("Gee Dee"), 2 religious exclamations (As God Is My Witness, Right Hand Of God). | profanity glossary |

SUBSTANCE USE - Several men smoke marijuana cigarettes around a table in an apartment, three women in a kitchen cook methamphetamine and one women takes a cupful into another room and sets it down on a table (no one touches it), we hear that older men use a teen boy to sell drugs on street corners (we do not see this), two men in an apartment smoke drugged cigarettes and drink beer as they scratch their arms and hands as if they are allergic to something (we see clouds of white smoke), we see a close-up of a bottle of cocaine sprinkling powder onto a table and someone cutting it into lines with a razor blade, and a blister pack of tablets is seen on a table with two tablets missing. Four men sit on a train with shot glasses of clear liquor and the bottle is on a table, a bottle of beer is seen in front of each of four men at a table, several bottles of alcohol are shown on a serving table, beer bottles are seen in front of several men and a few men drink from the bottles, and a glass of wine is shown on a dinner table. A man smokes a fat cigar.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Vigilante justice, CIA actions, paid assassins, murder, loss, grief, anger, revenge, helping others, creating beauty, selflessness.

MESSAGE - Fight for justice and do good.