Review: Mafia and vigilante cliches receive an attractive Mediterranean gloss in ‘Equalizer 3’ (2024)

You can check off all the things we’re supposed to be afraid of in “The Equalizer 3”: terrorists, mafiosi, imported drugs, shady real estate schemes. But fear not. Denzel Washington is back to save us — and more lovable, innocent Italians than we could imagine — from every overhyped bogeyman the film throws at us.

But can he protect the violence-damaged soul of his character, former Marine and Defense Intelligence Agency operative RobertMcCall? Probably not, even if this third “Equalizer” collaboration between Washington and director Antoine Fuqua teases moral reckoning early on.

Physically and spiritually wounded after perpetrating an incredibly gory bloodbath at a crook-infested Sicilian winery, the vigilante with a very special skill set barely makes it to the Amalfi Coast alive. When the kindly Dr.Enzo (Remo Girone) asks his delirious patient if he’s a good or bad man, McCall honestly replies, “I don’t know.” Enzo, as well as franchise screenwriter Richard Wenk, feels such an answer means the man must be good. Therefore absolved, the American doesn’t just rapidly regain his strength in the whitewashed cliffside town of Altomonte (charming Atrani was the actual location), his self-regard and dead-stare swagger grow back too.

McCall will need them to dispatch all the despicable Camorra gangsters who want to turn Altomonte into a casino resort. The troubled avenger has found some kind of peace, or at least a picturesque retirement location, in the lovely village, which seems exclusively populated by salt-of-the-earth types. These include appealing barista Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro) and Giorgio (Eugenio Mastrandrea), the decent yet ineffective police chief who has an adorable, eminently kidnappable young daughter. They’re all terrorized by the motorcycle-riding thugs of Naples crime kingpin Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio).

As he’s done to Boston’s bad guys in the last two movies, McCall brings the terror home to the unlucky mooks. If McCall had any existential doubts, they’re squashed by the fun of finding a new nation of irredeemable villains to dispatch with meat cleavers and fireplace pokers. That he’s a sad*st who gets off on demonstrating pain compliance in a crowded ristorante goes unmentioned (viewers will complicitly feel his justified charge).

Washington, who is an American Conservatory Theater alum, is also infectiously enjoyable playing some well-written cat-and-mouse banter with Dakota Fanning’s young CIA agent Emma. When she was a child, they co-starred in the stylish 2004 thriller “Man on Fire,” and Fanning clearly delights in parrying with him as an adult this time.

Manichean as its worldview is, this film has some nuanced pleasures. Once McCall recovers his cool killer mojo, Washington is a joy to watch. Fuqua directed the actor’s Oscar-winning performance in “Training Day”; though this grisly entertainment is a shadow of that deep dive into corrupt psychosis, the director knows how to get the best out of his star.

Speaking of shadows, mad genius cinematographer Robert Richardson (“JFK,” “Inglorious Basterds”) goes to war with the Mediterranean sun here, and wins. There’s a steel blue tinge to the exquisitely composed corpse farm McCall leaves in Sicily, and the camera embraces every dark passageway and cramped outdoor stairway to be found in otherwise sparkling Altomonte. It’s a rich, noirish comeback from the distracting, Is-this-supposed-to-be-black-and-white palette Richardson and Fuqua chose for their last feature, “Emancipation.”

Still, good looks and brutal action can’t hide the fact that the film traffics in Italian stereotypes with the same impunity as simplistic notions of good and evil. It features a Feast of San Gennaro procession, Sophia Loren movies are projected on Altomonte’s piazza, and mafia dons think nothing of dismembering police and drive black Ferraris. These mobsters fill their palazzos with mostly naked statues (a giant, floating bust of Mussolini earns its laugh), and when a soccer game is won, mammamia, the celebration!

But despite its reductive tendencies, “The Equalizer 3” is still superior to your standard Liam Neeson/“Death Wish” action flick. If the movie didn’t sacrifice McCall’s personal obliteration for cheaper thrills, it might even have been interesting.

Bob Strauss is a freelance writer.