Trailer: THE EQUALIZER 2

Robert McCall is back! Sony has released the first trailer for Denzel Washington's first ever sequel, The Equalizer 2. Director Antoine Fuqua and writer Richard Wenk also return in their respective roles behind the camera from the first film, as do Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman in front of the cameras. This time Pedro Pasqual (Kingsman: The Golden Circle) and Ashton Sanders (Moonlight) also gets in on the action, and cinematographer Oliver Wood brings his Bourne experience to the look of the film. The Equalizer movies are, of course, based on the 1985-1989 TV series created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim, which starred spy icon Edward Woodward (Callan). Like the series, the premise of the movies finds former secret agent McCall attempting to atone for his past sins by using his espionage skills to help those with the odds against them. The revenge-driven story in the sequel, however, seems to be more motivated by McCall's spy past than any present client. (Such storylines were also a staple of the show, though less frequent.) With the revenge storyline and (at least partial) Turkish setting, this trailer does bring to mind Taken 2, but hopefully this spy sequel will prove more original than that one, which basically rehashed the plot of the first Taken movie. The first Equalizer proved to be a surprisingly solid TV-to-film adaptation. The Equalizer 2 opens July 20.