Robert McCall (Denzel Washington), after the carnage in Sicily, finds himself in a cozy little village in Southern Italy, where he makes new friends, including a caring doctor (Remo Girone). Soon, the former agent realizes that his friends are under the direct control of local criminal bosses. When the mafia begins to terrorize the residents, McCall stands up to defend the innocent.
Denzel Washington as Robert McCall in a still from “The Equalizer 3”
In the second “Equalizer,” McCall overcame his challenge with “a hundred books,” symbolically completing the task with Marcel Proust. Entering the third round with the same director, Antoine Fuqua, Denzel Washington’s character has lost his intellectual flair – this time, it seems, he has no time for literature, even though the Sicilian flavor is much more conducive to it than the Istanbul one. Washington once again demonstrates the power of justice, a binary world strictly divided into good and bad, and wrinkles in his seventh decade – not a sad reality, but rather an adornment for any action hero. Fuqua, unlike the increasingly rare Washington, doesn’t stop, continuing to launch action films into production, even after a series of films with blank cartridges (“Emancipation,” “Infinite”), his name in the credits is still as regular.
Dakota Fanning in a still from “The Equalizer 3”
Whether mediocre action films need sequels is a reasonable question, but in decent societies of film lovers, it probably isn’t even asked. Fuqua squeezes everything out of his character, whom Washington plays with extreme delicacy: the same perfectionist quirks with arranging napkins, a valiant smile, and intellectual detachment. And, of course, manual therapy on bandits using an arsenal of piercing and cutting objects. If in the second “Equalizer,” for example, the Turkish flavor was politely pushed aside: no Istanbul locations, no native villains (McCall fought with his negligent American colleagues there), then in the third installment, the authors decided to go all out, fully indulging in the local atmosphere. Fights and shootouts among the narrow Italian streets, the camera constantly captures the most beautiful sculptures, and the antagonists themselves are temperamental thugs with tattoos, devouring spaghetti in between their affairs. While the locals passionately love life and watch films on the wall of a house with romantic affection, the bandits are pressuring innocent fishmongers.
Dakota Fanning in a still from “The Equalizer 3”
This time, there is much less sentimentality, and less toothless action too (a whole hour is spent on the introductory part), and McCall himself has become much more taciturn. But in terms of violence, Fuqua’s film has cranked up the sliders: here are broken limbs, and severed arms in the mafia style, and a generally rich set of graphic delights. Whether the film benefits from this is, of course, hardly likely. But to say that the third “Equalizer” has fallen flat on its face is also an exaggeration. Fuqua, always remaining a genre director, has simply driven “The Equalizer” into a narrow niche of second-rate action films, which have a quite predictable life dynamic: the first film is well-known and still watched, the second is lost in memory, and the existence of the third is learned only after the fact. McCall’s next adventures in search of justice may not find their audience – watching for the third time as a killer-avenger cuts up countless bandits is not only a pleasure, but also a somewhat tiring test. And appealing to Washington’s charisma or to the acting chemistry (there are basically no stars here anymore, except for the occasionally appearing Dakota Fanning) is becoming increasingly difficult and pointless.