‘The Equalizer 3’ Review: Denzel Washington on Brood, Kill, Repeat – The New York Times

As one does in Italy, Robert McCall likes to sit down in just a little cafe, watching the world cross by. McCall — an enigmatic avenger performed by Denzel Washington — likes tea, however he’s tremendous with the espresso that a phenomenal server brings him with a smile. Individuals typically smile at McCall, maybe drawn to his seems, his quiet mien and the restrained depth of his physicality, as if he have been holding again an amazing and terrifying power. Or possibly, like the remainder of us, they’re making an attempt to silently encourage McCall to simply get on with it and begin portray the city pink.

That is the third and apparently final “Equalizer” film that Washington will make. Perhaps he’s grown uninterested in the franchise’s same-old ultraviolence or maybe he’s tired of the predictable predictability of all of it, even when this installment is as reliably watchable if ethically challenged because the earlier ones. Regardless of the case, little has modified for the reason that first “Equalizer” (2014). McCall remains to be the enigma all in black who, when brutal push comes inevitably to more-brutal shove, demonstrates extraordinary fight abilities, near-superhuman energy and a genius for predicting the trajectory of our bodies flying and falling in area.

Washington is unsurprisingly the first purpose to observe “Equalizer 3,” which is mainly a showcase for him to smolder, swagger and lightweight up the display as he wanders a tiny, wildly lovely city on the Amalfi coast. Tucked beneath a mountain and dealing with the ocean, the city is miraculously freed from swarming vacationers, which is among the story’s extra outlandish conceits. McCall lands there quickly after the opener, an enormous, splashy quantity in Sicily that units the darkly brooding temper and underscores that villains ought to by no means be too cavalier about leaving their corkscrews mendacity round. Our man isn’t going to make use of it to uncork a bottle of Nero d’Avola.

The corkscrew leads to the identical susceptible spot the place you’d count on it to go, particularly when you’ve got seen the primary “Equalizer.” In that film, the skewered baddie was a minion within the Russian mob; the human cork right here is within the Italian mafia (particularly the Camorra). The repeat of the corkscrew bit provides to the film’s retrospective high quality, as if Washington and his principal collaborators within the collection — the screenwriter Richard Wenk and the director Antoine Fuqua — have been bidding a nostalgic farewell to McCall and the grim, darkish (morally, actually) fallen world that he has been making an attempt to set proper all these years.

A reliably energetic, typically stressed director, Fuqua has tamped down his customary visible flamboyance, and for essentially the most half he merely oscillates between many, many sweeping aerial pictures and nearer ones of the actors (the forged contains Dakota Fanning and Remo Girone) doing their factor. A few of these eagle-eye factors of view could also be a operate of the city’s tight coordinates, although Fuqua might identical to taking part in with drones. He additionally tosses in a couple of cineaste nods — McCall’s head is shaved once more, so cue “Apocalypse Now” — as he affords up a imaginative and prescient of recent Italy (previous males with fishing nets) as canned as something shot on an previous Hollywood lot.

Though the areas and supporting actors are usually new, nothing else is, familiarity being a part of the enchantment of this sort of style customary. As soon as once more, a broodily charismatic, patriarchal American loner serves as jury, choose and executioner, meting out punishment to the depraved and avenging the wronged. To that finish, it’s instructive that you just don’t study why McCall is in Italy till very late. You could briefly surprise what he’s doing within the nation — is he retired, on a mission or trip? — however this data is as irrelevant because the names of these he dispatches. All that issues is watching McCall kill, for justice and leisure.

The Equalizer 3
Rated R for excessive gun, knife and corkscrew violence. Operating time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters.