Jonah Naplan   September 1, 2023

Robert McCall desperately needs a break. The man must be almost seventy by this point. He’s fought his way through a trilogy of mediocre but combustible enough star vehicles, he’s been shot, stabbed, hit by blunt objects, and found an unnerving doppelganger in the Bard himself in Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” He’s experienced love, tragedy, loss, fellowship and betrayal by the means of friends, allies, strangers, and of course, the many foes he dispatches with brutal force that are each as insignificant as the individual personalities of, say, a mother’s 100 children, all with rhyming names, in a Dr. Seuss book.

To say I’ve not admired star Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua’s prior work in the “Equalizer” franchise is something of an understatement, and suggesting that this new one is perhaps the best possible amalgamation of what these movies ever could have been is not saying very much. “The Equalizer” movies have always felt like a dollar store “John Wick,” with half the thrills at half the price. The best thing to be said about “The Equalizer 3” is that it finally feels comfortable in its own skin, which, as this film is a supposed finale, makes it much more of a discomfiting accomplishment that arrives far too late. There’s a lot of sludge here; many missed opportunities, roads that could have been taken, and valuable increments of runtime that could have been purposed more responsibly elsewhere, but as a sendoff for Washington’s skilled vigilante, it’s serviceable enough to sneak by.

This time around, Robert McCall is in Italy. Why? I’d tell you that’s not important, but it does become slightly relevant in the last five minutes. The “cold open,” as genre buffs would deem it, is a goldmine of gore and brutality, demonstrating what these movies at their most imaginative (and bonkers) can achieve. With help from his unique set of skills, McCall kills everyone at a Sicilian vineyard, snatches a set of keys from a dead drug lord’s hilt, and takes off on his mission, should he choose to accept it, of course.

What’s always been most curious to me is that McCall is never commissioned to do his dirty work by any outside organization. He’s not being barked commands through an earpiece, nor is he professionally affiliated with the C.I.A. He doesn’t even have a comic relief sidekick that’s just in the business for the snacks! McCall works by his lonesome, on his own schedule, often lurking in the shadows. You could call him a voluntary assassin, even if you don’t consider hyperbole to be an appropriate form of rhetoric. No, this gentleman is equal parts buoyant and intense, either direction each manifesting whenever necessary.

It’s the impartiality of Washington’s performances in these films that asks the integral questions of where this man finds himself at this point in his life, and whether or not he’s “too old” to still be heaving punches. In the first, he faced off against Russians, in the second, he stood up to a sharp-shooting Pedro Pascal, and in “The Equalizer 3” he both fights with and for a small Amalfi coastal town cozily nestled between a mountain and the sea. After suffering injuries relating to the vineyard shoot-out, McCall is discovered on the side of the road by a kindly cop named Gio (Eugenio Mastrandrea), and is nursed back to health by a local doctor named Enzo (Remo Girone).

The time it takes for Robert to regain his strength and move on to the next action setpiece probably covers a good 45 minutes of dead air. The weakest aspects of the “Equalizer” movies have always been their tendency to tell stories rather than showcase carnage, when in reality, all we much came to see was Denzel delivering the latter. “The Equalizer 3” takes too much time, sacrificing the sufficient pacing that earns adrenaline rather than having you beg for it. When Robert isn’t killing people, he’s sitting at cafes sipping at his coffee (tea was not an option in Italy), or reading, or talking to agent Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning) who’s perfectly capable of handling her own inside a treacherous drug ring case.

Washington is far and away the best part of “The Equalizer 3,” and seems to have been allowed more thespian freedom this time around than his previous turns as McCall. It’s the subtle, more abstract choices that you notice from Washington, many of which seem to have been curiously improvised. This is also certainly the funniest “Equalizer” movie in an otherwise humorless franchise, infusing the moments of grisly violence, or, more frequently, the tense moments leading up to the grisly violence with some of the darkest humor you may ever hear in film.

When the violence does come, it’s as gleefully gory as you could want from this franchise, and perhaps the most absurd. When the villainous Italian mafia, lead by young gang leader Marco (Andrea Dodero), is first introduced, not only do we know that they’ll meet their untimely demise soon enough, but it’ll be done with the same stomach-churning succulence as always prescribed. The way McCall dispatches his victims in “The Equalizer 3” is perhaps even more stylistic than that of the other two. The slow-motion surveillance of a scene before a brawl has been removed, and the action begins with a blink of an eye, including kills that skewer eyelids.

Abiding by the classic rules of the trade, McCall doesn’t just end up OK by the end of the movie, but is seemingly left with not a single scratch. Washington’s immortality calls to mind the stubbornness of retro movie stars such as Stallone, Schwarzenegger and even Eastwood. And in an incandescently beautiful way, “The Equalizer 3” echoes harmonies of spaghetti westerns, a la Sergio Leone, spinning tales of a savior uniting a small community to combat against their oppressor. Though the oppressor itself is given little self-justice—each member of the Camorra is subjected to barely even one character trait—its adversarial spirit is acted upon as more of an idea than a physical force of nature.

“The Equalizer 3” has just enough bite to satisfy a franchise closer, though I doubt anyone will really remember it by the end of this year. The gratuitous killings will be a treat for gorehounds, while film culturalists will appreciate the parallels to Washington’s earlier work in “Training Day,” “Inside Man,” and, inevitably, “Malcolm X.” Though searching for any sort of rhyme or reason in his performance may leave you falling short, at least Washington gives us something to search for.

Now playing in theaters.