The Equalizer 3

I reviewed The Equalizer long ago, but I skipped the 2018 sequel for some reason. Well, I'm back, and so are director Antoine Fuqua and star Denzel Washington, for The Equalizer 3. Let's see what main character Robert McCall's been up to.

McCall (Washington, naturally) starts the film being held at gunpoint in a mafia wine cellar. McCall killed all the other henchmen at the winery, and now, head honcho Vitale (Bruno Bilotta), and his surviving henchmen, will end him. He ends them instead and takes off with some money. But Vitale's young son shoots him on his way out. McCall passes out in the town of Altamote, where good doctor Enzo (Remo Girone) and officer Gio (Eugenio Mastrandrea) fix him up. He soon settles down nicely in Altamote.

Meanwhile, the Camorra (the Campanian mafia) plot to run everyone out of Altamote for their real estate. The Quaranta brothers - Don Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio) and brutish enforcer Marco (Andrea Dodero) - are the film's specific big bads. They brutally extort, terrorize and murder anyone in their way until McCall finally steps in. That's basically the gist of the movie.

It takes what seems to be an hour before McCall finally takes on the Camorra. All the while, we get a few sequences of drawn-out brutality that will have you wishing McCall would step in immediately. They're quite detestable from their first scene onwards. Dodero perfectly sells Marco as a downright thug, while Scarduzio's Vincent is generally subtle in his villainy. On the plus side, it makes it cathartic to see McCall take them on. It's only 109 minutes long, so it's not dragging things out too much.

The side plot follows CIA Agent Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning) as she investigates the mafia's ties to drugs and terrorism. I worried for a bit that it would end up a disconnected tangent (like in Day of the Soldado). But it makes sense once we learn Vincent's involved. Collins is a fine character, though the various supporting characters in Altamote were generally more memorable. A few highlights include Enzo, Gio, Gio's daughter Gabby (Dea Lanzaro) and Angelo the fishmonger (Daniele Perone). At the end, we learn that McCall went off to Italy on behalf of a couple (Marco Giulliani and Simona Distefano) swindled by the mafia. We barely know them, but we're still pleased when they're saved from bankruptcy.

Now for the star. Washington's easy-going nature is still present and accounted for. McCall is still charismatic whether he's an ordinary man or an Equalizer. In the latter phase, he's truly a nightmare to evil, which is accentuated by Robert Richardson's cinematography. McCall's first scene in the wine cellar is wonderfully foreboding. McCall's good nature and his interactions with Altamote's residents makes the slowest parts compelling. 

The Equalizer 3 promises to be the last of the film series. If it is, it's a decent way to end a trilogy. Its plot maybe slow, but it's not too long and its star is still as compelling as ever. See it whichever way suits your time. It's still a good time at the movies. That's it for now.