Denzel perfects his art in The Equalizer

MOVIES

Denzel Washington, as Robert McCall fights for justice throughout the trilogy

The Equalizer 3

(Continued from last week)

By DYLAN MURRAY
THE third instalment was a masterpiece, although some would argue that the second film was better.
It was released in September this year and has since grossed about $185.6 million worldwide.
The film opens on the island of Sicily in Italy, where our hero has tracked down funds belonging to a retired old man and his wife in the United States. This, however, is not revealed until the end of the movie.
After taking out the bad guys in the beginning of the film he stumbles upon more than he was looking for, but is fatally wounded by a young Italian lad who shoots him while his back is turned.
McCall manages to make it back to the mainland but passes out in his car on the side of a winding road in Southern Italy. A marshal finds him, brings him to the little community where he lives and has the local doctor tend to his wounds.
Now just as Papua New Guinean storytellers on the street would give you details without the names, I am going to attempt to do that whilst trying to be as specific as possible.
The doctor removes the bullet from what could have been a fatal wound or something that would have crippled him.
And for the second act of the film, our hero is trying to rehabilitate his legs and get back to good health. He finds walking around the lovely community a calming activity, albeit in the the stares from the locals as McCall is the only black person there. He grows to love the little community, hearing about how everyone knows everyone and how they all respect and adore the doctor who saved his life because he helped bring a lot of them into the world.
He starts to see a glimpse of something he has been chasing ever since the beginning of the first film, after his wife passed: a quiet life.
He is slowly starting to like this small community, the people and the food, the bonds, and how being there brings him a sense of peace.
Unbeknownst to our hero, the little community he has come to imprint on is the target for a mob boss who wants to buy off the area and build a casino or resort. Vincent Quaranta is the big baddie of the third film, and he sends his younger brother Marco and his gang of small time crooks to scare, intimidate and extort the people of the little community into selling their shops and homes. Things take a sharp turn when Marco Quaranta and his goons burn down a fish market belonging to one of the people McCall had befriended. McCall sees how the whole community comes out to help and support the aggrieved shop owner and his family.
Now for those who have followed the last two films, McCall has a thing with caring for people he feels have become his friends, as seen in the first film where he rescues Teri from the Russians.
His poor Marshal friend decides to do some digging and pulls up public CCTV footage and tries to identify the car in the video, which works against him as the mob has it’s hooks in government departments. Marco Quaranta and his goons kidnap the Marshal’s daughter from school and beat him up when he returns home. This gives McCall even more reason to stay and watch over his new friends.
At the same time that this is happening, McCall sends word to the CIA concerning something else he had found at the beginning of the film – drugs. He calls up a young female agent and gives her a tipoff on a possible drug smuggling ring used to fund acts of terror.
She follows the tip which brings her to Italy as well where she tracks down and finds our hero at a coffee shop that he has come to favour.
It is not revealed yet how and why he reached out to her in particular, even though she asks him that a few times.
A few nights after the Marshal is beaten and patched up by the good doctor, McCall is having dinner in a small restaurant; the Marshal is there too, with his wife and daughter. Marco Quaranta and his goons walk into the place and try to intimidate the Marshall, but halfway through Marco becomes very aware of our hero as his presence and stare is enough intimidation to shake both him and his gang.
He instead turns to McCall and tries to scare him – McCall proceeds to almost break his hand and asks them to leave the restaurant and shortly leaves the restaurant himself. Outside in the dark cobblestoned alleyway, Marco and his gang wait to “get rid” of him.
He slaughters all four of them; one two with a car they drove, and the other two, including Marco, with a knife. This was a demonstration of a man who may well have written the assassinator’s bible.
Vincent was not happy about this. A few nights later he drives into the community with his men and threatens to kill members of the community one by one until McCall is surrendered.
Our hero surrenders voluntarily after he sees that Vincent planned to execute the Marshal first, in front of his family.
He tells Vincent to take him elsewhere and not kill him in front of everyone in the community, but just before Vincent could make his call, the doctor comes to his aid, holding his phone up and recording everything. Everyone in the community start recording on their phones and Vincent is forced to leave but vows to come back and end McCall.
Before they are able to do so, he stalks them to Vincent’s villa, cuts off the power and eliminates them one by one executioner style.
McCall is like a ghost in this part of the movie, moving around the mansion and taking Vincent’s men out quietly and saving their sleeping boss for last.
Watching the scene made me think of the Bible verse that talks about how devil comes to steal, kill and destroy, and likening him to a thief in the night. Only in this case the devil was Denzel Washington as Robert McCall. He stalks and scares Vincent like a beast on a hunt.
He knocks him out and forces drugs down his throat while he is unconscious – the same type of drugs that he found in the beginning of the film as Vincent is tied into the trafficking ring.
Then as Vincent awakes and realizes he only has a short time before his system shuts down from an overdose, he crawls out into the street trying to get away from McCall. There is something very poetic about this bit of the movie:
McCall does not stalk Vincent as he tries to get away, nor does he flee the scene. He instead walks calmly behind his struggling and panicked victim while he tries desperately to get away somehow as onlookers just stare and gasp as he passes.
McCall just keeps following at a pace and distance, like the angel of death dressed in black and waiting to make sure the man is dead.
The screams and the setting, even the music painted perfectly a scene from a modern-day Dante’s Inferno, and McCall was the hooded Azrael waiting to collect his soul.
It is revealed at the end of the movie who the young lady is – the one our hero reaches out to for help in the drug trafficking case.
She’s revealed to be Emma Collins, the daughter of his friends from the second film: Brian and the late Susan Plummer.
He asks her for a final favour which was to deliver the money that was taken from the retirement benefits that belonged to a man back in the States – it was his final deed on home soil. In the end, he chooses to stay in that little community in Southern Italy.
He finds the peace he has been looking for since the first film, which is arguably the best end to the story of an assassin seeking to atone for things in his past.
The Equalizer then and now
Besides the television series spinoff starring Queen Latifah as Robin McCall (a retired CIA agent who wants to help people) the first iteration of the character was played by Edward Woodard in the 1985 television series of the same name.
The character and series were originally created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim, and ran for four years from 1985 to 1989.
The original plot: retired intelligence agent with a mysterious past who uses his skills to exact justice on behalf of innocents. Not much difference between both Washington’s and Englishman Woodard’s iterations of the character, except that the former added depth and more violence.
He pulled it off perfectly – some say it was a subtle nod to the latin sic vis pacem parabellum, which meant “if you want peace, get ready for war.”
Woodard’s version however had a propensity to rely on less violent means, as seen in his preference for his pistols and sub-machine guns.
He is passionate towards the plight of the ones he helps and resorts to violence only when necessary, portrayed to be living in high-end New York and having a taste for the finer things. He is essentially a gentleman vigilante, an American James Bond played by a British actor.
Whereas Washington’s rendition of the character is a good Samaritan by day and an unstoppable killing machine by night.
Extremely protective and obsessive about bringing people to justice.
Meanwhile, Queen Latifah’s Robin McCall operates in a universe of her own and has no ties to Washington’s Robert McCall as he has no children and no known siblings.