Cert 15 121mins Stars 3

Hollywood big shot Denzel Washington is right on the mark in this stylish vigilante thriller which is otherwise a soft target.

Returning in his first ever sequel, the star continues his longstanding collaboration with director, Antoine Fuqua, who made 2014’s franchise starter and 2001’s Oscar-winning  Training Day.

Based loosely on Edward Woodward’s 1980s TV show, it begins curiously by reinventing the kind-hearted yet hard-as-nails, Robert McCall, as a globe trotting master of disguise before returning him home to Boston where the austere widower resumes his life as a taxi driver.

When an undercover CIA agent is murdered in Brussels and a storm of violence is unleashed, the tea drinking McCall proves capable of doing a spot of decorating, sorting out the local hood and solving an international conspiracy.

It’s a slow burning affair which jolts into life whenever Washington is allowed off the leash to deploy in his ferocious charisma and meaty bone-snapping action moves.