Flasz On Film

Even though some of his recent directorial output (The Guilty, Infinite) might suggest otherwise, Antoine Fuqua has always been an interesting filmmaker capable of producing compelling movies. He used to be to Ridley Scott what Edward Zwick was to Steven Spielberg – an aesthetic symbiont who would always trail behind his big-name counterpart. He never had a Gladiator, an Alien, or a Black Hawk Down to springboard him into the top echelon of Hollywood. He’s a Ridley Scott who topped out with Body of Lies and The Counsellor, but that’s OK. The world needs simple genre movies aimed for mature audiences. And Antoine Fuqua is one of the guys you can count on in this regard.  

Despite the fact that I wasn’t the most enthusiastic about The Equalizer 2, I think I should come clean and let the record state that a lot has changed since then. Because we’ve been continually bombarded with progressively more bombastic blockbusters, whose primary mission is to fight for the chronically distracted younger audiences with their elaborate set pieces, jazzy colour palettes and oftentimes cringy self-awareness (think any of the recent examples like Fast X, MI:7, John Wick 4 or anything coming out of the Marvel stable), I welcomed Fuqua’s The Equalizer 3 with arms wide open.  

Why?  

Many reasons. But let’s just say it’s simple enough to look refreshing against the backdrop of nearly everything I have seen on the big screen this summer. In fact, you probably don’t even need to know much about the preceding two entries to have a decent time watching it; however, it definitely helps to have some context because the film – albeit tangentially and more or less inconsequentially – connects to the preceding entries. What matters is that Fuqua and Richard Wenk (who returns as the screenwriter) set out with an explicit intent to make this movie a self-contained piece of genre entertainment, almost in contravention to the status quo established by the big branded cinematic universes ruling the roost.  

Therefore, The Equalizer 3 throws us into its narrative in media res and reminds us exactly what the preceding instalments were all about – unfiltered violence and action underpinned by Denzel Washington’s take on a loveable stone-cold killer, Robert McCall. We catch up with him in Sicily where he has just dispatched a whole collection of henchmen in a remote villa.  

By the way, what is the proper collective noun for henchmen? A gaggle of henchmen? Judging by the logic of this movie and many genre pieces like it, it should be “an incompetence of henchmen”. So, let’s start over.  

Having just dispatched an incompetence of henchmen with gleeful ruthlessness reminiscent of John Rambo in Rambo: Last Blood, McCall finds himself wounded and dying in a little village on the outskirts of Naples. He is rescued and treated by the local doctor and soon McCall falls in love with the serenity of the village life. However, this idyll is short-lived as the local gangsters connected to the infamous La Camorra are bent to sow fear into the hearts of the locals. Naturally, McCall feels it is his mission to set things right – to equalize, if you will – and free his adoptive community of the evil that has befallen them. Simple stuff. Ish. Because we do have a bit of a subplot involving a CIA agent scratching at McCall’s identity (Dakota Fanning reuniting with Washington years after Man on Fire), and a tiny McGuffin. But it’s still simple enough for the story not to get ahead of itself. 

In fact, it is so simple that you wouldn’t be wrong to point out the movie is a collection of well-tattered clichés. Correct. There is absolutely nothing original about the story underpinning this movie. But let’s be clear here: I am in no way seeing this as a detractor, because it’s not always what the movie is about that makes watching it worthwhile. What matters here is how the movie goes about telling its story, which is essentially an incarnation of archetypal storytelling found all throughout the history of cinema, literature and beyond. I’m not going to go as far as to pretend I have seen prehistoric cave paintings depicting such narratives, or that Homer may have once written a poem about Robert McCall’s archetypal predecessor. Or that you can find it in The Bible. As far as I can make out, Fuqua and Wenk have essentially turned this movie into a modern-day take on a western where a lone gunman has to defend a community that has taken him in. A gruesome and totally disposable exploitation western you wouldn’t be too surprised to pick up on VHS back in the day when it was still customary to stop over at a Blockbuster on your way home from work on a Friday to find some braindead entertainment for the weekend.  

Make no mistake, The Equalizer 3 is not an A-movie. It’s a total B-movie that somehow elbowed its way into cinemas, presumably on the back of Denzel Washington’s box office draw. Therefore, if you want to set yourself up for success, you need to check your expectations at the door and perhaps even forget that you could compare Robert McCall to John Wick. And that many people would – wrongly in my opinion (but more on that in a separate piece I have brewing on a back burner in my kitchen) – dismiss it on the back of not having enough flashy set pieces to make it a compelling enough piece.  

I suppose you could accuse this movie of failing to grow in scope with each passing instalment. It’s true. Fuqua’s film isn’t even trying to invest any tangible mental horsepower into developing its world-building or establishing a mythos the audience could latch onto. Instead, it follows through on its episodic format. But failing to grow is not equal to failing to evolve, which this entire series has been subtly doing while keeping focus on Washington’s exploits as a ruthless Good Samaritan. It started as a stealth homage to Taxi Driver and Death Wish, evolved into a grounded superhero movie and now it has concluded as a modern spaghetti western, as directed by an angry disciple of Ridley Scott. And I strongly believe it’s enough.

Sure, The Equalizer 3 isn’t a thinking man’s action film, or a particularly bedazzled fireworks display. It’s quite the opposite – it often makes very little sense and some of its narrative ebbs and flows are convenient at best. But as far as I can tell, if you can keep me in the sanctified state of suspension of disbelief, you can get away with nearly anything. Such is the power of genre magic that if you play your cards right, even the stupidest movie in the world can successfully pull wool over my eyes and validate the price of admission. That’s all this movie ever needed to do and what makes Antoine Fuqua a film director I always look forward to spending time with, even if not all his movies are hits. He always seems to know what the mission is, which is to provide solid entertainment on the back of fundamentally archetypal storytelling anchored by an interesting central character on a quest for redemption, and drenched in enough fake blood to make you wonder just how much money the filmmakers spent in this department.

And judging by the number of Alfa Romeos used on the set, the fake blood budget may have been nearly as high as the money set aside for car repairs, am I right?