Denzel Washington is the only reason this whole franchise works and anyone saying different is lying to themselves but what reall kills is that most of the time it all comes down to the action scenes that often you forget the rest of the movie, why I decided to watch all three movies again. Denzel Washington just has this presence where he can go from being super friendly and charming to absolutely terrifying in like two seconds flat and you believe every word coming out of his mouth when he threatens someone. This third movie takes him to Italy where he gets tangled up with the mafia and honestly I was not sure how that was going to play out at first because the whole point of The Equalizer is supposed to be this everyday guy helping strangers in trouble, not flying overseas to fight organized crime syndicates but they actually made it work pretty well by the end. The violence in this one is just as brutal as the other two, consider the first two were not too gory movies where you see someone getting their stomach rip appart, but I still think they did set the bar a bit higher like more than the first two movies, Denzel literally goes full psycho on these guys with bones popping out and guns going through heads and all that nasty shit which I loved because it looks like for some scenes they use practical effects instead of going full CGI and done right it makes the movie feel more real, this is the kind of stuff that makes you go damn thats gonna hurt. The Italian mobsters do some really messed up stuff throughout the movie that makes you pissed off and want to see them get destroyed so when Denzel finaly goes on his rampage it feels so damn satisfying to watch these assholes get what they deserve, they terrorize this entire small town and you get attached to the people living there so by the time McCall starts his killing spree you are totally on board with it.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17024450/
- Platform: HULU
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Anyone who watch this movie probably agree that the pacing drags like crazy, there are so many filler scenes of Denzel just walking around Italy or making tea or random transition shots that add absolutely nothing and make the whole thing feel way longer than it actually is, I thought this was like two hours and twenty minutes but turns out it was under two hours which is wild when you think about how slow it moves in the middle, essentially its here where you only remember the action scenes and forget everything else about the movie. Dakota Fanning shows up doing CIA subplot stuff that kind of ties together at the end but mostly just slows everything down even more and feels like they only brought her in because of Man on Fire nostalgia rather than the story actually needing her character there at all, dont get me wrong I loved seeing them together again after all these years but her character does not do much. The movie opens up with Denzel already in Sicily taking out an entire vineyard full of mobsters trying to recover some stolen pension money, witch by the way makes no sense at all because why would the Italian mafia need to hack some brick layers pension fund for like 370 grand when they are importing drugs from Syria and selling them in the United States, this sounds more like something coming out form a lower tier drug dealer and not someone who is directly importing drugs, the math does not add up but whatever I guess, sometimes as I mention before you have to downshift your brain to enjoy some movies. That opening scene is absolutely insane, Denzel is sitting in a chair surrounded by dead bodys and these gangsters come in pointing guns at him, he gives them his famous nine seconds speech and then in one wide shot he takes out all three of them by shooting through one guys head into another guy behind him and then blasting the third guy with a shotgun, its cold blooded and sets the tone for the rest of the movie perfectly.
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After that Denzel gets shot in the back by some kid, the grandson of one of the mobsters he just killed and he tries to shoot himself but the gun is empty witch seemed weird to me because if he really wanted to die why not just go back inside and grab one of the five other guns laying around, anyway he gets on a ferry all bloody and somehow makes it to this small coastal town on the Italian mainland where a cop named Bonucci finds him and takes him to a doctor. The whole middle section of the movie is Denzel recovering and getting to know the people in this town, theres a lady who runs a coffee shop that seems like shes gonna be a love interest but nothing really happens with that, theres a fish market owner named Angelo who becomes his friend and just a bunch of regular town people living their lives witch was actually pretty nice to watch because you get to see Denzel be charming and funny with them. The problem is they spend way too much time on this stuff, like we get it hes bonding with the town and starting to feel at home for the first time in forever, we do not need fifteen minutes of him walking around, sitting on benches drinking coffee, some of it felt like a damn travel commercial for Italy instead of an action movie, aside form this the whole movie looks amazing and you can tell they had a real budget to work with because everything is shot so well, but pretty scenery can only carry you so far when the storys moving at a snails pace and here my problem with it.
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Emma Collins a CIA agent; played by Dakota Fanning, who Denzel calls to tip her off about drug money being laundered through a winery in Sicily, she shows up in the town to talk to him and they have some good scenes together where you can tell they still have that chemistry from Man on Fire, theres even a funny moment where shes trying to take pictures of him secretly and he poses for her witch made it a bit cringe but I still smile about it. Later on we find out shes actually the daughter of Susan from Equalizer 2, the lady who was Denzels freind and got killed, so that explains why he called her specifically and it was a nice touch to tie the movies together like that but her whole subplot with tracking down Syrian terrorists and busting drug dealers does not really go anywhere interesting, what I mean is that it doesnt add that much to the investigation, this is the problem with most Equalizer movies and is that Denzel doing McCall character is probably too much for everyone else to matter?!. She gets car bombed and spends the rest of the movie in the hospital so what was even the point of having her there, they could have cut her character completely and the movie would have been fine but I get it, its part of the touching details that McCall character gets to soft a bit his character, but at the same time it feels like they only included her because people loved Man on Fire and they wanted that nostalgia boost. Meanwhile the Italian mobsters are going around terrorizing everyone in the town, they firebomb Angelos fish market, they beat the shit out of Bonucci the cop in front of his wife and baby because he called for help, they are just being complete idots to everyone and the movie does a good job making you hate them so much that you cannot wait for Denzel to start killing them off one by one, what is a movie if it doesnt make you feel pain and joy?.
As many other worth watching action movie when it hits, it hit hard, it finaly happens and it is absolutely worth the wait even though theres not nearly enough of it, I would say there was in total like seven or eight minutes of actual action in the whole movie witch is crazy for an action franchise but the kills are so brutal and graphic that they make up for the lack of quantity. Denzel does not just shoot people and move on, he makes them suffer, the last guy always gets it the worst because hes putting on a show at that point, one dude gets a wine bottle smashed in his face and then gets stabbed with the broken glass, another guy gets hit by a bus out of nowhere witch was hilarious and the final boss Vincent gets injected with a lethal dose of his own drugs and Denzel literally sings to him as hes crawling away dying and foaming at the mouth witch was one of the creepiest things in the entire movie. Theres this whole horror movie vibe where Denzel is The Boogie Man, Baba Yaga if you know what I mean, walking around in the shadows taking people out and you barely see him, its like trying to fight a shadow that just absorb them and then spit them out, and the mobsters are the victims, Anton Fuqua should honestly direct a horror movie because he nails that entire vibe. The big showdown in the town square was kind of dumb though, the mobsters have Bonucci and they are threatening to kill him unless Denzel comes out, so he does and then the entire town pulls out their cell phones and starts recording everything witch apparently scares the bad guys away, that scene was so ridiculous and felt like they did not know how to write themselves out of that corner so they just threw in some social media cancel culture bullshit that made no sense for drug dealers. This is the type of bull shit that movies either directly or indirectly try to push and ruins everything, probably in a decade would be normal but for anyone who grew up with movies like Scar Face or Tv Series like The Sopranos, you know they wouldnt give a shit if the whole town film them, because they all know whats going to happen if they win. Overall I still enjoyed it because Denzel is just that good and the kills are satisfying as hell, but the pacing issues, lack of action compared to the first two movies keep it from being great, aside from the very short and random subplots, its more like a 7.5 out of 10 for me, still worth watching if you watch the first two for some clousure, although Im not sure when will I watch them again.
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