"Nine seconds. That's what you have to decide your fate."
"I'm really beginning to like this place and the people. I'm starting to believe, from the bottom of my heart, that this is where I’m supposed to be. So, whatever it is that you and your friends do, please... do it somewhere else."
— Robert McCall
The Equalizer 3 is a 2023 action thriller film, once again directed by Antoine Fuqua with Denzel Washington reprising his role as Robert McCall. It is the sequel to The Equalizer 2.
Following the events of the previous film, McCall, now a retired assassin, begins to live a new life in Italy. As he finds himself at home, he discovers that his new friends are under the control of the local crime bosses. He soon ends up in the crosshairs of the Mafia.
It released on September 1st.
Previews: Official Red Band Trailer
The Equalizer 3 contains examples of:
- Avenging the Villain: After McCall kills Marco, Vincent sets out to do this.
- Badass in Distress: The film's setup is motivated by McCall being shot In the Back while leaving the site of a villain who he'd managed to take out. McCall passes out from the pain and is rescued by a local policeman, who lets him recover at his home in Altamonte.
- Batman Cold Open: The film opens with a sequence set at a winery, where the Starter Villain discovers that McCall has gunned down most of his guards and is now at gunpoint, having infiltrated the winery to stop a cyber-crime.
- Big Bad: Vincent Quaranta and his crew mates.
- Book Ends:
- In the first movie, McCall faced off against The Mafiya. For this final installment, he's now against The Mafia.
- The movie also begins and ends with McCall single-handedly wiping out an entire Mafia hideout, and saving the leader for last.
- Bullying a Dragon: Marco thought it would be a good idea to come after McCall and the neighborhood after McCall pressed on his median nerve and nearly made him defecate himself in public. Moments before Marco could retaliate, however, McCall rams the van into one of the bodyguards before killing Marco.
- Chekhov's Gun: The setup for the film (Robert infiltrating a winery, and his elimination of the villain in order to stop a cyber-crime) is finally answered at the end, when the random bag McCall was shown walking out with is the pension of an American retiree, who had it stolen in the incident, and has it returned to him by Emma.
- Churchgoing Villain: Vincent is shown to be attending church.
- Community-Threatening Construction: Vincent wants to build resort hotels and casinos over the town of Altamonte, which McCall had befriended, using his brother Marco to intimidate the people who lived there.
- Covers Always Lie: Both of the main posters make use of the Eiffel Tower Effect by clearly showcasing Roman landmarks (with conspicuously large Italian flags edited in to really drive the point home). In the film itself Rome only appears briefly, and McCall himself never makes his way further north than Naples.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Marco barely lasts even a minute in a fight against McCall before McCall slits his throat.
- McCall's raid on Vincent's mansion, where he singlehandedly slaughters all of the henchmen with very little effort, before knocking Vincent out and overdosing him with his own drug.
- Driven to Suicide: After being shot in the back in the opening, McCall attempts to shoot himself, only to find he's out of ammunition.
- The Dragon: Marco, Vincent's brother, is the one who gives McCall and the neighborhood the most trouble.
- Eye Scream: McCall, while in captivity, breaks loose and stabs a nearby mook in the eye with his own gun. Not content with that, he then fires the gun while its still in the guy's eye to shoot the boss.
- Final Boss: Vincent is the final antagonist McCall faces and the last person of the series he kills.
- Grand Finale: According to the trailer and poster, this film will be the "final chapter" of the Equalizer trilogy.
- Guns Do Not Work That Way: During his Driven to Suicide moment, McCall attempts to shoot himself but finds his gun is empty. However, his pistol is shown with the slide forward, whereas if the magazine was empty the slide would have locked back.
- It's possible that when McCall got shot in the back and firing wildly seconds after that, his thumb was riding on the slide release when he fired his last shot, thus the slide will not lock empty.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: McCall forces Vincent to overdose on his own drug.
- Karmic Death: One of the first things Vincent's men does is to hang an old man after throwing him out a window to intimidate the neighborhood into giving up their homes so Vincent could build his resorts and casinos. Later, during the final showdown, McCall hangs one of the henchmen before throwing his corpse through Vincent's stained glass window as a wake-up call.
- The Mafia: This time around, the main antagonists are the local branch of the Camorra.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Turns out that McCall only went to that winery to get a man's pension back. He had no idea the cybercrime he was pursuing would lead to uncovering a major drug and terrorist plot.
- Mook Horror Show: McCall's assault on Vincent's mansion plays out like a home invasion or a horror/slasher film, as he makes his way through the darkened building to pick off all the Mooks one by one, and after force-feeding Vincent an overdose of his own drugs, ends the assault by slowly following after him as he stumbles down the street in terror before finally dying.
- Mythology Gag: The first thing McCall orders at the cafe is a cup of tea. He is given a different drink and told that "tea is for old women and Englishmen." In the 1980s show, the titular role of Robert McCall was played by British actor Edward Woodward.
- No Communities Were Harmed: "Altamonte" is really Atrani, a city all the more recognizeable given that it's right next to Amalfi. Most of the movie is shot on location, too.
- Pretty Little Headshots: Downplayed in most cases. The audience gets a few looks at the carnage left in McCall’s wake in the intro, and while the mooks subjected to headshots have pretty ugly wounds, they are still just a little too small. Weirdly played straight when McCall shoots the Starter Villain in the head… with a 12-gauge shotgun. From point-blank range. He gets a gruesome wound on his cheek and blood spatter on the wine barrels behind him when by all rights it should have taken his head clean off.
- Rank Up: By the end of the film, Collins gets a promotion for her involvement stopping the Camorra.
- The Reveal: The final sequence of the film reveals that Emma Collins is Susan and Brian Plummer's (from the previous film) daughter, who followed in her mother's footsteps to pursue government work.
- Sequel Goes Foreign: This installment moves from America to Italy.
- Storming the Castle: After Vincent threatens the neighborhood once again, in which he nearly shoots McCall in front of everyone while the people start filming him, McCall decides to cut the bullshit and go after Vincent in his mansion, killing Vincent's bodyguards one by one before overdosing the boss himself with his own drug and watching him die a slow and painful death.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: It doesn't matter how much of a Badass you are, even in the Equalizer universe. Getting shot In the Back hurts. A lot. The pain is so great that when it happens to McCall, he is Driven to Suicide — except he has no bullets left. The resulting pain leads him to pass out while fleeing the winery, and he likely would have bled out were it not for the arrival of Gio, who rescues him and brings him to Altamonte.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The boy who shoots McCall in the back and is the sole survivor of the massacre at the Sicilian vineyard is last seen running away from the scene. There is no clue whatsoever about what happened to him, and the dialogue when the vineyard is being searched by the Italian police and the CIA shows they are unaware of his existence (as he would’ve been able to give them a description of McCall).
- A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: In the opening, the sole person McCall overlooked during his opening massacre at the winery happened to be his target's grandson. Said grandson proceeds to shoot McCall In the Back while he's making his exit.
