Review: The Equalizer 3 (2023)

If it didn’t feature Denzel Washington killing scores of gangsters, The Equalizer 3 might be the most stereotypically Italian movie ever made. Or at least, the most stereotypical of what Americans think life in Italy is all about. Taking place in a small coastal town in Sicily, and starring Washington and directed by his frequent collaborator, Antoine Fuqua, this third entry in the action series alternates between gruesome violence and hilariously corny sentiment.

The Equalizer 3 opens with a truly grisly sequence. Washington’s mysterious fixer, Robert McCall, brutally kills an entire gang of Italian mobsters who are smuggling drugs in through wine. The scene is horrifically violent, with close-ups of brain matter splashing against walls and deep, gushing knife wounds. But it also has the film’s most iconic image of Washington’s badassery, which was borrowed for the poster: Washington sitting in a chair in a wine cellar, surrounded by corpses, hands on knees, waiting for the other gangsters as he’s backlit by soft beams of light flooding in through the cellar window. Fuqua, who’s a dependable filmmaker with strong populist sensibilities, has worked with Washington plenty before, not only on the previous Equalizer films but also Training Day and The Magnificent Seven. He knows how to play up Washington’s strengths, which are nearly legendary at this point. You can’t help but be impressed.

Robert lays waste to the gangsters, but is injured escaping, shot by the son of the chief gangster, and found bleeding out in his car by a friendly local cop. The cop brings him to the old doctor in the village who cares for Robert quietly, sensing that he has the potential to be a good man if he’s in the right environment. And so Robert is slowly integrated into this folksy Italian village, and The Equalizer 3 transforms into a Hallmark movie about Italian village life. The village happens to be home to every possible cliche of Italian. There’s the kindly doctor who speaks in wise-seeming aphorisms. There’s the friendly local fishmonger who’s caring for his beautiful wife and son. There’s the beautiful woman who runs the cafe and flirts with Robert when he comes in for his daily tea. There are friendly footballers and smiling grannies and everyone is always giving him free food and talking about family and speaking about the wonder of living in this beautiful village in this beautiful part of the world.

It’s an idyllic life, if it weren’t for the mafioso who torment the locals for money to fund terrorist false-flag attacks. The tonal contrast between the friendly village drama and brutal action is rather hilarious, but also evidence of how ridiculous the film is. The gangsters beat the fishmonger in front of his family and murder an old man in a wheelchair, dangling his corpse from an apartment balcony, laughing and mocking the whole time. Luckily, the village has Robert in it, who decides to clean up the village and protect the people who have welcomed him like family. Robert gets some help taking down the gangsters from the CIA, with a young handler played by Dakota Fanning who flies in to handle the local investigation. This marks the reunion of Washington and Fanning 19 years after Man on Fire, and it’s fun to see the two interact, even if Fanning’s character is ill-fitting for her talents.

There’s no real mystery as to how The Equalizer 3 will resolve. Once Robert determines he’s going to kill the gangsters, he kills the gangsters. Brutally. But there’s no real tension as to whether he’ll kill them, simply how violently. It’s fun to watch Washington dispatch scummy mafioso in inventive ways, even if none of the action scenes are as clever as the Home Alone-style booby trap sequence in the Home Depot at the end of the first film. And the lack of tension does put a damper on the overall enjoyment.

Washington’s mythos is so strong at this point, and Fuqua is so invested in his star’s badassery, that the actual plot mechanics can’t really create genuine mystery as to how any single moment involving Washington will resolve. Of course, you don’t watch The Equalizer 3 because you want to see Washington put through the ringer. You watch it to see him be a badass. But when the action moments are relatively free of suspense, and the dramatic moments are flush with Hallmark sentimentality, it’s hard to be too enamoured of the film. The Equalizer 3 is made to watch on cable some lazy Saturday afternoon, but even compared to the modest pleasures of the previous two films, it’s notably the laziest of the entries, coasting largely on Washington’s sizable star power to find and entertain its audience.

5 out of 10

The Equalizer 3 (2023, USA)

Directed by Antoine Fuqua; written by Richard Wenk, based on the TV show created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim; starring Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Eugenio Mastrandrea, David Denman.

Related Posts