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Equalizer 3, number of seconds: 9.
9 seconds… Robert McCall (Denzel Washington – The Little Things) tells crime boss Lorenzo Vitale (Bruno Bilotta), is the amount of time he has to decide before things go South for him and his henchmen in his Sicilian winery, even though our lead is the one held captive.
And this apparent capture comes after he’s seemingly bumped off plenty of bodyguards, although whle this takes place before the film begins, we do get some DOOM-style first-person views of it later on.
However, for a scene which is referred to not once – but twice – in the trailer, it therefore lasts a fair bit longer in those promos than in the actual film! Padding much?!
Following a situation which leads him to consider getting out of the business, instead, he holes up in Altamonte, spends his days drinking tea in a cafe and spills the beans about the winery to the CIA’s Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning – Brimstone), which seems a dumb move because then she’s more interested in what he’s up to on a daily basis… even if it’s just drinking tea. LOTS of tea.
The trouble with Equalizer 3 is that it just treads a very well-worn path of ‘newcomer wanders into town, sees the locals harrassed by bad guys, and then takes steps to sort them out’. One such example of this is in The Magnificent Seven, the 2016 remake of which is led by… Denzel Washington!
In addition, even though this movie reunites Washington with Dakota Fanning – from when they co-starred in Tony Scott’s sadly poor Man on Fire – neither of them look like they particularly want to be here, as they sleepwalk through this plotless drivel.
Our ‘Roberto’ is settling a score on behalf of the locals, which will results in a lot of deaths and murders… and, sadly, most of these are offscreen, so we only get to see the end result of these altercations. In a film which lasts 109 minutes, time would’ve been better spent with less of Denzel sat around drinking cups of tea and spreading out his napkin in a pre-drink OCD ritual, and more of him punching bad guys in the head, and stabbing them in the throat. Okay, I get having a ritual, since if I’m eating somewhere, I’d rather put my phone on said napkin, so it doesn’t get coated in whatever gunk hasn’t been cleaned off the table, but then no-one’s queueing up to make a film about my life!
I loved the ’80s TV series back in the day, but have no particular desire to check out the first two of Denzel’s escapades. Are they as bad as this one?! Can’t be much worse. And even though this is considered the final entry in a trilogy, there’s plans for a fourth, as well as a prequel, either staring Michael B Jordan, or Denzel’s own son, John David Washington (Tenet).
As for the 4DX in this film, I went with that format because it was National Cinema Day, and only cost £3 whichever format you saw it in. How was it? Well, check out the video below…
This comes after a recent screening of Training Day in a 4K Restoration at Cineworld. I haven’t seen it since I first saw it at the cinema, which was also at the same Cineworld (in Jan 2002) and was the last time I went there before going back on a regular basis, starting with the first Star Trek movie, last summer.
I didn’t like it at all, but I wasn’t big on Denzel Washington at the time, but he’s grown on me over the years.
It’s still far from brilliant, and feels more along the lines that Denzel is just a complete bar-steward. It’s also unrealistic that all of this would happen within one day, and the writing is a bit of a mess at times. Still, I think 6/10 is fair.
Equalizer 3 is in cinemas now, but it not available to pre-order on home formats.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 109 minutes
Release date: August 30th 2023
Studio: Warner Bros
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 (ARRIRAW (4.6K)
Cinema: Cineworld Didsbury
Rating: 1/10
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Producers: Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Tony Eldridge, Antoine Fuqua, Alex Siskin, Michael Sloan, Steve Tisch, Clayton Townsend, Denzel Washington
Screenplay: Richard Wenk
Based on TV Series created by: Michael Sloan, Richard Lindheim
Music: Marcelo Zarvos
Cast:
Robert McCall: Denzel Washington
Emma Collins: Dakota Fanning
Gio Bonucci: Eugenio Mastrandrea
Frank Conroy: David Denman
Aminah: Gaia Scodellaro
Enzo Arisio: Remo Girone
Vincent Quaranta: Andrea Scarduzio
Marco Quaranta: Andrea Dodero
Angelo: Daniele Perrone
Khalid: Zakaria Hamza
Carmela: Manuela Tasciotti
Gabriella Bonucci: Dea Lanzaro
Chiara Bonucci: Sonia Ben Ammar
Viking: Alessandro Pess
Marco’s Thugs: Niccola Fava, Alessandro Xavier De Silva
Chief Barella: Adolfo Margiotta
Stefano: Niccola Senni
Lorenzo Vitale: Bruno Bilotta
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.