The Best Movies of the Year: The Unexpected Comforts of The Equalizer 3

Let me tell you how it started. I work a couple of days a week at my local multiplex. For a little while this year, all my shifts ended at 5pm, which is a terrible time to leap on the bus if you value making it home without having a stranger’s elbow in your face the whole way. So when there was a movie showing at the appropriate time, I’d stick around and watch it, then take the journey back in considerably more comfort. Being a planner, I’d make this decision as far ahead as my rota permitted. One day this September, I noticed The Equalizer 3 was going to be my only option for my next shift—not an obvious choice, as I’m not a big action movie person, and I hadn’t seen either of the previous entries in the series. Still, the ticket was free, and I could always do my homework. 

So I watched the first one. 

There’s a moment that happens early in the first Equalizer that becomes a motif throughout the series. We see Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) carefully fold up a teabag in a napkin, and then head off to an all-night diner to drink it. It’s the simplest, smallest detail, but everything it says about his precision and rigor and loneliness in so modest an action, and the added charm that comes from it being the mighty Denzel Washington doing such a delicate thing, made me fall for this series instantly. 

Though the second movie—which I saw immediately afterward—has less of the attention to character that makes the first so appealing, a couple of barnstorming setpieces (including a climactic knife fight set on a tower during a hurricane) kept me very much on board. 

By the time my shift ended the following day, I was actually quite excited for the third entry in a franchise I’d been unfamiliar with 48 hours before. 

The Equalizer 3 starts with a tour around a Sicilian mafia hideout, where every surface is adorned by the corpse of a man punctured horribly by some sharp metal object. This looks like the work of our old friend, Robert McCall. And indeed it is, but it’s a job which almost kills him: As he tries to make his escape, he’s shot in the back by a scared child.

When next we find the severely ailing, unconscious Robert, he’s scooped up by local cop Gio (Eugenio Mastrandrea) and taken to the picturesque seaside town of Altamonte, where doctor Enzo (Remo Girone) saves his life. As Robert recuperates, we learn the town is being targeted by the Camorra, who want to buy out the local mom-and-pop shops and sell them to big businesses for maximum profit. They aren’t afraid to hurt anyone who defies them. Brutally. Starting to feel at home among the citizens of Altamonte, Robert decides to help them out the best way he knows how.

With Denzel on the cusp of 70, The Equalizer 3 certainly qualifies as a “Geriaction” film of the kind Liam Neeson now almost exclusively appears in. But Antoine Fuqua’s trilogy-capper handles the age factor with unusual grace for the genre. Much of the movie is centered around the toll that opening massacre took on Washington’s aging body, and his slow recuperation with the help of his new Italian friends. However, rather than the long wait for him to be fighting fit again becoming dull or frustrating, it only adds to the tension. The bad guys are so resoundingly, sadistically awful, it truly does seem that only Robert McCall can stop them. And while he’s not able to, they direct all their violent energies towards Gio—a sweet local cop with an adorable young family. Gio’s survival is intimately linked to McCall’s recovery, and that makes it feel all the more urgent. 

And yet conversely, the other reason The Equalizer 3 fares so well among its peers is that Washington is so charming, such a radiator of unbridled star power, we just don’t need to see him embroiled in violence to have a good time watching him. The Equalizer 3 knows and loves its leading man, and trusts we’ll be happy to bask in his charisma as he sits in cafes and chats with the friendly citizens. Yes, he is still doing the teabag thing, only this time it’s against the most picturesque of backdrops. As he walks around the local market with his new friend Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro), who’s just gently teased him about his new purchase (“Ah, I see Stefano finally sold that hat!”), it’s hard to imagine anyone not being content to watch Washington relax and live the dolce vita for the next 90 minutes.

Alas, there are bad guys to equalize! 

There’s an unapologetic straightforwardness to The Equalizer 3. The villains are entirely, relentlessly evil. The good guys are total sweethearts, devoid of any conceivable flaws. Anyone looking for three-dimensional characters, nuanced motivations…well, they’re going to be disappointed.

Except—Denzel. As much as he’s incredibly charming, he’s also—obviously—a formidable actor. While the Equalizer franchise hardly represents the most challenging material he’s faced, that doesn’t mean he’s not tackling it whole-heartedly. 

A simple arc that follows through the three movies is Robert McCall’s search for a community after the death of his wife years earlier. That’s why in the first, he takes that meticulously wrapped teabag to the 24-hour diner every night—he doesn’t want to be alone. 

In The Equalizer 3, he’s finally found his people: “I’m starting to believe, from the bottom of my heart, that this is where I’m supposed to be.” A lesser actor would have made McCall’s declaration to the Camorra boss (Andrea Scarduzio), as he pleads with him to leave the townsfolk alone, cheesy or wheedling. Washington delivers it with aching sincerity, underlined by a decade’s worth of exhaustion. He’s so close to peace; to living out the rest of his life simply, and in good company. The idea that it could all be snatched away with such cruelty is too much to take. And so he doesn’t.

It’s the mix of sentimentalism and splattery violence that makes The Equalizer 3 so unexpectedly endearing. There’s a whole subplot here involving Dakota Fanning as a CIA agent, and it’s completely superfluous; clearly just there as a nod to the rapport she and Washington had in 2004’s Man on Fire, when she was 10 years old. Though the narrative would have rolled along fine without her, the two are still so lovely to watch together, it’s difficult to begrudge The Equalizer 3 for leaning into that schmaltzy nostalgia. Another sugary twist, as to her character’s parentage, is a little eyeroll-inducing—and yet there’s something weirdly sweet about that detail being in the same movie that was, only minutes earlier, so enthusiastic to show us what a man looks like with a hacksaw bisecting his face.

Although the John Wick franchise, which also started in 2014 and (sort of…) finished this year, has understandably stolen The Equalizer’s thunder when it comes to action scenes, Antoine Fuqua can still engineer them with impressive verve. Maybe it’s just the Italian setting, but there’s a majestic sweep to the setpieces in the franchise’s third entry that gives them an operatic feel; the pulse-pounding, classical-infused musical leitmotifs add further excitement and propulsion to the already robust sequences. 

Yet, there’s a stripped-down simplicity to the climactic one that has a gratifyingly nasty bite (spoilers ahead I guess, but…did you really expect McCall to lose this battle?!). After killing all his henchmen, McCall has one final bad guy left—the head of the Camorra. McCall knocks him out, and when he awakes, he’s tied to a post by the neck, foaming at the mouth. McCall has force-fed him the drugs the Camorra had been selling on the street, and he tells the mafioso that he has six minutes left to live—McCall’s so confident in this assertion that he cuts him free, certain that he’s no longer a threat. 

The dying man stumbles to his feet, in desperate, futile search of help, and all the while Washington looms behind him, an angel of death, determined to see the end of this hideous game for himself. He’s not gloating exactly, but he’s not not gloating; this dying man—only able to crawl now, as he barely makes it out of his compound—standing in for all the many, many bad guys in his life who have stolen the final breaths of so many good people. So many of his friends. He just needs to see the end of it—to know that he, and his new family, are safe. He does. It’s truly over.

And as he dances with his fellow Altamonte citizens in the final scene, sharing in their joy at some sports victory that he doesn’t yet understand, the completion of his arc—simplistic, yes, but moving all the same—feels as satisfying as a three-course meal in an empty stomach. 

The Equalizer 3 is, by no objective measure, the best film of the year. Countless were more innovative, or artistic, or complex. There were plenty of smarter, less schematic screenplays, and performances that exhibited a greater range. I’m not trying to argue that it actually topped the charts of the hundreds released in 2023. But in terms of the pure pleasures of solidity, of seeing a movie work within well-worn conventions to such a nourishing degree, of basking in the reflected glow of the starriest of star power, of seeing a trilogy arc ended with care and love, The Equalizer 3 was unsurpassable. Sometimes it’s nice—important even—to be reminded that real cinematic joy can be found in the most unexpected of places.

When I boarded that blissfully empty bus to head back home, I was still smiling.

Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can read her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Podcast Review, and Paste.