The Equalizer 3
It’s not the most original of stories, with many of the action movie cliches we’re very much accustomed to, but I always felt that it’s the execution that matters in this genre, and the movie delivers in spades on that.
★★★★1/2
Mild Spoilers
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
Written by Richard Wenk, Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim
I suggest that you go watch this one before reading my review. You won’t regret it. I came out of the cinema with an adrenaline high. A little emotional too. It’s that good!
The Equalizer 3 is kind of a mystery. It opens with our hero Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) in an unexplained situation where he is in Italy, Equalizing a bunch of baddies, but we don’t know why. Then he gets entangled with more baddies, helps out a small Italian town, and somehow gets Dakota Fanning involved in the fiasco. But it will all be explained in the end.
If you’ve seen the first two movies or even the TV show they are based on, you know that McCall is some kind of retired secret agent badass who goes around helping regular folks with his particular set of skills. I might be remembering the past two movies wrongly, but I didn’t recall that the character was this ruthless, because McCall v3 is one scary mofo in this one. I know John Wick is the boogeyman among criminals and assassins, but he was fearsome because of his efficiency in killing. But McCall is more frightening because of how brutal he gets and how much he seems to actually enjoy it, not unlike a serial killer. The bad guys here are merely sadistic and cruel, because they haven’t yet met McCall. It was glorious to see these Mafia scumbags get their gruesome comeuppances when they realised too late that a far bigger alpha male was in town.
It’s not the most original of stories, with many of the action movie cliches we’re very much accustomed to, but I always felt that it’s the execution (executions?) that matters in this genre, and the movie delivers in spades on that. And I loved that they put the effort to set up and pay off with some nice surprises and reveals in the end.
Denzel Washington is really good in the role. Not sure if his sometimes odd and bizarre demeanour was a symptom of his character’s OCD, or just Denzel doing his Denzel thing. Nice to see Fanning reframing with Washington again since Man on Fire, chemistry from that flick still intact here. Man on Fire fans will not be disappointed.
Heard this was the last one, which is sad because I actually want to see more adventures of Robert McCall now.