Movie Review: 'The Equalizer 3'

The Equalizer 3 (2023)

Directed by Antoine Fuqua

Written by Richard Wenk

Starring Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, David Denman

Release Date September 1st, 2023

Published September 1st, 2023

I was not ready for how astonishingly violent The Equalizer 3 is. In the opening scenes we see a parade of viscera, a series of dead bodies that have been wrecked and bloodied in a fashion that would shame Jason Voorhees. When we finally see the man responsible for this buffet of brutality, our old friend Robert McCall (Denzel Washington), he's being held at gunpoint but seconds away from murdering everyone in the room. In a scene punctuating moment, McCall picks up a shotgun and blasts buckshot into the backside of the main baddie as he attempts to crawl away.

John Wick doesn't want to mess with Robert McCall. That's how cool this level of violence makes McCall look, he can be favorably compared with John Wick. The level of violence still to come in The Equalizer 3, is just as spectacular as Robert survives being shot in the back, wakes up in a small Italian town being cared for by a kindly small town doctor, good at taking care of people and their secrets, and then Robert becomes the town's protector against the mafia. What Robert does to the members of the Italian mafia in The Equalizer 3 makes your average horror movie seem tame in comparison.

And yet, while what I am describing might not sound appealing, the film is engrossingly watchable and very exciting. The Equalizer 3 taps the bloodlust of the lizard brain like few films I have ever seen. The good versus evil dynamic is so pristine, so well defined, that we have no compunction rooting for Robert to reign down bloody vengeance. The nameless baddies of The Equalizer 3 are members of the Mafia, ugly, brutal bullies who aren't merely criminals, they are funding terrorists with their activities. On a broad scale they are murdering hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people.

But, on an even more impactful, personal scale, when we see these nameless bullies harm a kindly Italian grocer or threaten the family of a friendly neighborhood cop, our identification with them takes on an even more visceral, palpable quality. When you can see some of yourself in the victim of violence, that identification deepens and the desire to see that person defended becomes vital and compelling. Having Robert McCall then act upon our desire to see these people protected, it's dramatic and invigorating.

The end of The Equalizer 3 drives this point home on a granular level. When it is revealed what led Robert to be in Italy and do all that he ended up doing, it is cathartic and incredibly emotional. It makes you wish there was a real Robert McCall to step in an set a proper balance between good and evil in the real world. Seeing Robert McCall step up for the little guy and re-balance the scale between the just and the corrupt, is incredibly satisfying. It's wish fulfillment via spectacular and imaginative violence.

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