Verdict
Summary
I liked the movie, but I just found the handling of McCall’s killing to be out of control, over the top, and akin to the great cinematic serial killers.
Plot:
Wounded, an assassin is nursed back to health in a cozy Italian village where he steps up to protect the town from a bunch of thugs.
Review:
After getting severely wounded in a dustup that should’ve been a walk in the park for him, retired assassin Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is found by an old surgeon and taken to a small Italian village to recuperate. Owing the old doc his life, McCall has nowhere to go, so he tries acclimatizing to the local culture; he’s seen as an outside at first, but soon the locals begin to welcome him, and in time he also takes notice of a group of thugs working for the mafia who strong arm local businesses into paying protection money, and if they don’t pay, the thugs take extra measures to take everything from the humble families. McCall won’t have it: He uses his lethal skills in killing to eliminating the thugs, which incurs the wrath of the mafia, who come in droves to the village to get retribution … but they have no idea who they’re messing with. Meanwhile, McCall gets on the radar of a government analyst (played by Dakota Fanning) who is working on a case that McCall is somehow connected to.
A spaghetti western in disguise, The Equalizer 3 has all the trappings of the type of movie Corbucci or Leone would’ve made in their heydays, with a wounded hero in a small village, surrounded by thugs who come riding in on their horses, except this time they’re motorcycles. Washington is truly chilling as the borderline sociopathic / psychopathic hero who leans in way too close to his victims as they lay dying, just to watch them take their last breaths. He clearly enjoys killing people in this movie to the point where I began comparing him to Michael Myers without a mask. His smile and his jovial enjoyment of the simple things creeped me the heck out this time around, and while I liked the movie, I just found the handling of his killing to be out of control, over the top, and akin to the great cinematic serial killers. He could be Hannibal Lecter or someone like that: he’s too good at killing, and he’s beyond hope as a human being, aside from siding with the right faction of people. He’s scary! Antoine Fuqua clearly knew the type of movie he was making here, and his love for spaghetti westerns is very apparent.
Sony has just released a Blu-ray and a separate DVD of The Equalizer 3, and the disc comes with a digital code, as well as a bunch of nice bonus features, including one that examines the collaborations between Washington and Fugua, as well as an action featurette, a reunion feature with Washington and Fanning, a feature on the beautiful locations, a lyric video, and more, including deleted scenes. Sony also released the trilogy on DVD and Blu-ray.
