Back in 2014, The Equalizer introduced to us the world’s most dangerous guy: a trained killer who’s convinced he’d also make a great life coach. Former intelligence officer Robert McCall, played with stately gravitas by Denzel Washington, can both politely coerce you into swapping fast food for salads and butcher the Russian mobsters on your back. Now, after chucking Pedro Pascal off a cliff in 2018’s The Equalizer 2, McCall has returned to stab pistols through mafia men’s eyeballs in picturesque Sicily.
Antoine Fuqua’s action franchise, loosely based on the Edward Woodward-fronted TV series of the Eighties, has made McCall the typical “avenging angel”, the saintly man called upon to do humanity’s dirty work. At its best – and The Equalizer 3 is about as good as the first film – it neatly counterbalances Fuqua’s baroque, blood-and-guts action with Washington’s ability to command attention while sitting perfectly still.
