Show me a simple comparative bar chart of “Lifespan of Mob Henchmen in Movies vs. Lifespan of Mob Henchmen in Real Life.” This is what I pondered during the opening reveal which lay squarely on the fence between cheating and fascinating. The setting is a mafia compound/winery in Sicily. The Don winds his way slowly down to the buttery (?) dunnage (?) sorry, I dunno enough about alcohol to know the terminology –the villa basement where all the wine is stored in big barrels. Every few steps or corner turned, there’s a new body, a victim of violence – one guy shot in the chest, one guy with a butcher knife to the head. Oh, I think that guy just had an allergic reaction. No, I’m kidding; he, too, got aced by The Equalizer.
I say it’s a cheat because in the movie all we see is the “after,” not the “during.” However, I gotta hand it to anybody, mob boss or no, who can see bloody body after bloody body after bloody body (of his guys, no less) and still imagine that he’s getting out alive when this is done.
He didn’t make it out alive, of course. Surely, you don’t defeat The Equalizer 3.
To be fair, our titular hero Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) doesn’t get across the Tyrrhenian Sea unscathed, either. Hard to know how to respond here, because he gets shot by a child, one he refused to draw on. Is this a wake-up call? Is this his retribution? Is this his penance? Seeing as how severe injury doesn’t stop him from Equalizing, I think we chalk it up to the price paid for violent justice.
And there’s Equalizing to be done in Altomonte as well, sad to say. While recovering from the bullet-to-the-back, Robert enjoys the local flavor and becomes part of the town. Naturally, he becomes protective when the local mob harasses the local fishmonger, the local real estate mogul, and the local family cop. And again, I ask what is the lifespan of a movie mob henchman vs. a real-life mob henchman?
The secret to The Equalizer franchise is Denzel Washington’s unaltered confidence. He times his lethal confrontations (e.g. “you have nine seconds to decide the rest of your life.”); he narrates his infliction of pain
; he predicts the future in which you die. And he does it all as if a god-like presence. He never takes emotion with him to battle. And he doesn’t guess, ever. We see his sunny side when he’s off-the-clock, so-to-speak, chatting with locals or agents. At that point, the Denzel charm comes out to play and you swear you could be watching a romance. But before long, he resets to Spartan mode, where from the exact same neatly aligned café seat, he is capable of either enjoying a cup of tea or taking out a villain with a corkscrew depending on present company. His is the face of justice. The righteous get his smile; the wicked get his indifference … and his timer.
It seems The Equalizer 3 is the film shot in Rome this year without a bitchin’ car chase on The Spanish Steps. What’s going on here? Isn’t that a local ordinance or something? As I commented above, action fans will be cheated by the maze-like trail of bodies where we have to guess what happened. (But, well, it isn’t hard to guess.) This isn’t John Wick. This isn’t a well-orchestrated non-stop opera of violence. This is personal reflection where Robert McCall decides what he wants out of life, occasionally punctuated by .. occasional punctuations. Do you believe in justice to the point of lethal violence? Then Robert McCall is probably your hero. Do you believe in humanity pushed to inhumanity by circumstance? Same answer. His decisions are always righteous, swift, and permanent. Now, do you believe in due process and the court system? Well … then you might need another movie.
There once was an assassin named McCall
Who brought lethal justice to one and all
But when shot in the back
Robert rested and ACK!
We viewers went through violence withdrawal
Rated R, 109 Minutes
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Writer: Richard Wenk, Michael Sloan, Richard Lindheim
Genre: Nine-second justice
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: How cool do you like your violence?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Actual representatives of justice, I imagine
