Two-time Academy Award-Winner Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua have had a fruitful collaboration over 20-plus years. Fuqua, a director of music videos for such artists as Prince in the 1990s, directed Washington in his first best actor Academy Award-winning role in “Training Day” (2001). They belatedly re-teamed for “The Equalizer” (2014), a film inspired by the 1985 CBS TV series, “The Magnificent Seven” (2016), “The Equalizer 2” (2018) and now “The Equalizer 3.”
In scenes set in Sicily, we begin in with the camera following an old Italian man inside a vineyard’s farmhouse, where he finds the bloodied bodies of his henchmen. The soundtrack score by Brazilian Marcelo Zarvos (“Wonder”) moans and screeches. We know what we are gazing upon is the gory handiwork of retired Marine and former DIA officer Robert McCall (“two C’s, two L’s”), and yes, he sits at the end of long trail of bodies, unafraid with several guns trained on him.
We all knew what was about to happen. If you have an aversion to extreme screen violence, keep your distance. But if you like this sort of thing done well, you’re in for a treat, not only because the film features Washington in a definitive and entertaining role, tangling with the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta, but because it also reunites Washington with Dakota Fanning, who played the little girl a younger Washington defended against murderers in Tony Scott’s “Man on Fire” (2004).
In the aftermath of the carnage, McCall calls a young woman in the C.I.A. (Fanning), hunting drugs funding terrorism, and tells her where she can find the bodies and drugs. Seriously wounded, McCall is then rescued by a young carabinieri named Bonucci (Eugenio Mastrandrea), who brings the wounded man to his village’s wise, skilled doctor Enzo (the venerable Remo Girone), who is used to treating gunshot wounds. Soon, “Roberto,” who speaks some Italian, is walking up the town’s vertiginous stairs to the tune of church bells using Enzo’s father’s cane. Yes, he’s another Jason Bourne. The Sicilian fishing village is perched half in the sea and half in a cliff. A church at the very top of the village is 1,000 years old. Burnished by time and tradition, the village is a work of art. The black-clad stranger in its midst is noticed. But his extreme courtesy, bursts of Italian, amusing fussiness and frailty at a coffee shop endear him to new friends. McCall notices that a gang of young motorcyclists shake down local shop owners, sometimes violently. He tries to regain his strength before intervening.
Scripted by series regular Robert Wenk, “The Equalizer 3” is not only about a sawed-off hand in an ice bucket. It’s about the indignities of old age. For the wounded McCall, who is after all getting old, everything hurts. Stairs that he once could have negotiated with ease now give him pause. But soon, McCall wreaks his usual carnage. What makes these ultra-violent “Equalizer” films different in part is that McCall tells people what he is going to do to them before doing it, giving them a chance (they never take). Washington, who just played a fine Macbeth, is comfortable and fun in McCall’s “suits of solemn black.” Fanning and Washington have a nice father-daughter chemistry. A fiery explosion in the film is one of the most realistic I have experienced. Headed by Girone, the Italian cast is a standout. As the chief villain, Andrea Scarduzio has quite an exit scene. As a cafe worker named Aminah, the striking Gaia Scodellaro provides too-brief romantic interest. The film was shot at Cinecitta and on the Amalfi Coast. Go for the scenery and for a parting adventure with an old friend.
(“The Equalizer 3” contains extreme violence, profanity and gory images)
“The Equalizer 3”
Rated R. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.. Grade: B+
