Antoine Fuqua hasn’t made a horror movie yet, but with The Equalizer 3 completing this violent trilogy, he comes harrowingly close. These action films rival slashers with their inventive, gory deaths at the hands of a relentless killer who refuses to die. However, here, the killer is the hero instead of the villain, and he slaughters to save innocents from exploitation and murder. His victims aren’t virgins and co-eds; instead, Denzel Washington’s Robert McCall takes out Russian mobsters, American mercenaries, and the Italian mafia with everything from a corkscrew to their own guns.

The question Robert asks in each Equalizer film — “What do you see when you look at me?” — stabs at a debate, but this franchise has little moral ambiguity. The series positions Robert as a good man, and everyone else on screen falls just as definitively into the category of either good or evil, with no gray area in between. These movies provide little to mull over, other than placing bets on which everyday object Robert will turn into a deadly weapon next, like a wine bottle or a meat cleaver.

He merely does bad things to bad people, or more precisely, bad things to bad men. Over the course of three films, six hours, and countless deaths, Robert never metes out justice to a single female character, which feels more than a little regressive. Women exist here to be murder victims or damsels in distress with little agency, apparently incapable of the type of bad behavior Robert fights against in this man's world of bad and good men. Complaining about gender representation in a film that only really wants to be about brutal fight scenes would seem like a waste of mental energy. But Fuqua has always tried to make these movies something more than just an action franchise, and he has consistently failed.

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Yet, even now, three films into a morally simplistic franchise, Fuqua refuses to half-ass his approach, bringing his gritty style and attention to the visual details in every scene. Shots are thoughtfully constructed, and he offers a welcome sense of place, whether it was the Boston of the original film (and its showdown in a big box hardware store), the finale set in a coastal Massachusetts town in its sequel, or an Italian village in The Equalizer 3. Each setting is distinct, rather than existing just as an anonymous, featureless spot soon to become collateral damage in the fight between Robert McCall and whoever has earned his righteous anger this time around. We should probably be grateful for action movies that are made with this level of directorial craftsmanship, rather than what can happen when a random filmmaker simply captures all the punches and gunshots in frame and calls it a day. Yet it seems like a waste when that style is married with a script that feints at deeper meaning but then misses its target.

The Equalizer 3 never matches the talent Denzel Washington brings.

In league with Fuqua’s direction, Washington’s performance has consistently elevated The Equalizer 3 and its predecessors closer to their lofty goals of being more than just shoot-’em-ups. He obviously enjoys the role, as it’s the first character he has returned to in his decades-long career. Despite the ludicrous carnage, Washington devotes just as much energy to this role as ones that have won him accolades recently, including his work in Fences and The Tragedy of Macbeth. He gives a nuanced performance, replete with nice little touches that have accumulated over the course of the three films, like the moments where you can see him mentally and physically shift from warning about the violence he’s about to inflict into taking action. These movies are never on his level, but Washington makes them watchable with his unflappable charm, even when some of the gore tempts you to look away or the silly scripts from Richard Wenk make you roll your eyes.

At least The Equalizer 3's screenplay — by Richard Wenk and based on Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim’s ‘80s TV series — is far better than the previous movie in the series, which didn’t even attempt to be coherent. In this film's opening sequence, Washington’s Robert McCall takes down a notorious criminal in Sicily. (The movie is sure to clarify in its first frames that Sicily is in Italy, establishing how little it thinks of its audience, who has at least seen The Godfather, for god’s sake.) Yet Robert — who goes by Roberto now, grazie — is injured in the process, and a doctor (Remo Girone) in nearby Altomonte takes him in. Robert recovers in the small town, befriending its residents and maybe finally finding peace. But violence plagues them as the Camorra shakes down its citizens for money. Robert longs for a quieter life, but he cannot stand idly by while gangsters threaten his new neighbors.

True to its title, The Equalizer 3 is just more of the same.

Director Antoine Fuqua on the set of "The Equalizer 3." Credit: Stefano Montesi

The Equalizer 3 hits all the same beats as The Equalizer and The Equalizer 2. (Other than the absence of Robert’s love of reading this time around. I guess because he finished his reading list and there are just no more books left in the world?) The line blurs between what counts as a callback and what simply amounts to a lack of creativity. It’s a step up from the messy plot of the 2018 sequel, but this movie swings too far the other way. Everything here is a little too neat — apart from all the blood splatters — and too achingly imbued with meaning, just like Robert’s fastidious approach to his regular cup of tea. I groaned at a late reveal, both for its obviousness and sheer idiocy.

The Equalizer 3 contains few real surprises other than exactly how Robert will kill the next henchman. Audiences who have previously found pleasure in the series’ mixture of Washington’s monologues, vicious violence, and Fuqua’s energetic direction will be satisfied by this entry, but those who have been put off by its formulaic story or cruel streak will find this Peckinpah-wannabe pulp equally off-putting.

The Equalizer 3 opens in theaters Sept. 1.