The Equalizer 3 starts mid-bloodbath. Slain mafiosi litter the halls of a Sicilian winery – throats slit, machetes wedged in skulls. One man, of course, is the source of all this: Robert McCall (Denzel Washington), who’s first glimpsed seated on a high-backed chair, his pate gleaming as he waits for the Don Corleone of this operation to show up.
There’s no prelude to the rampage, so we just have to assume this outfit are getting their just deserts: by now, whether McCall is equalizing or going off on one has to be taken on trust. Viewers of the series so far, based on the 1980s Edward Woodward vigilante drama, know McCall doesn’t waste time, words, or napkins, which get folded scrupulously whenever they appear.
Seeing as this whole film’s set in Italy, McCall gets to tidy even more table dressings outside trattorias than he puts away goons – say, by smashing the barrel of a gun firmly into one assailant’s brain, then shooting another through the back of the dead guy’s cranium.
Gomorrah or no Gomorrah, the fictional seaside town of Altomonte (played by Positano) has become McCall’s favoured spot to lie low. Rumours spread fast of his preference for “no Gomorrah”: he makes no bones of his displeasure at arson attacks on struggling fishmongers. Behind that level scowl of Washington’s, a timebomb ticks.
His cover’s blown, as soon as he relays intel by phone to a CIA agent named Emma Collins, played by an ill-served Dakota Fanning. ISIS-produced amphetamines are being trafficked from Syria in fake wine bottles, with the proceeds going to terror cells. Fanning, who can only dream here of being Julia Stiles in the Bourne series, seems oddly slow to connect two and two, given all the real-world evidence of this exact drug trade uncovered in 2020.
