“The Equalizer 3” (2023) is the third and possibly final installment with Denzel Washington playing Robert McCall, a widow and retired DIA agent, who protects people from bad guys. Director Antoine Fuqua strays from the routine plot of having a single overarching story and multiple smaller side quests of McCall defending people in Boston, Massachusetts. Instead, the action unfolds in Sicily, Italy where McCall decides to fight the mafia. While this sequel may not be original, the way that Fuqua and returning writer Richard Wenk combine tropes is. It is part Western, part slasher film and part international thriller. You have seen it before, but never like this, especially with a vengeful protagonist who has a penchant for using anything and everything as a weapon, preferably sharp objects.

 “The Equalizer 3” opening is shot from a mafia boss’ perspective as he follows a trail of bodies and carnage, including a meat cleaver wedged in someone’s head, throughout the house.  When he arrives in the wine cellar, his men outnumber and surround McCall who is preoccupied with wiping the blood from his hands and is otherwise unbothered. Even though expected, it is still jarring for the viewers who watched the prior installments to confirm that the sensitive and protective McCall is responsible for this slaughter. It is the first time that Fuqua shows McCall unrestrained from the consideration of protecting others and ensuring that bystanders do not become collateral damage. Later Fuqua often shoots McCall as a massive shadow looming over the bad guys as if he is The Shape, which is how John Carpenter referred to Michael Myers in his “Halloween” (1978) script and soundtrack. Marcelo Zarvos’ score evokes this soundtrack during lowkey moments, specifically the piano from “Laurie’s Theme,” but when McCall gets homicidal, the music turns dissonant, high-pitched, and synthetic. Washington throws in a couple of accompanied with head tilts for good measure.

This McCall feels more nihilistic and merciless than prior iterations. “The Equalizer 3” never adequately explains why he is especially worked up over the mafia as opposed to prior villains whom he had a more personal grudge. As long as Fuqua shows McCall go through the baddies like a knife through butter, no explanations are necessary. One demerit lies in not getting to see McCall time. In the first two films, after he sets the countdown on his digital watch, the scenes are cut to show what McCall is assessing before he attacks. To ratchet up the terror, Fuqua shows how the soon to be deceased bad guys see him, which works, but Fuqua could have given both perspectives.

This opening sequence explains why Fuqua later belabors the point that McCall is a good man. It is not uncommon for the Western gunslinger to be mistaken for a priest, to be called a preacher or reform by becoming a man of the cloth. Fuqua associates McCall with priest imagery by consistently dressing him in black, having him surrounded with Catholic subdued iconography (the mafia get more ornate surroundings) and even having a random cassock clothed priest clinging to McCall to beg the bad guys not to kill him. At the end of “The Equalizer 2” (2018), in the form of a storm, God literally was supportive backup, and similarly the weather and the Roman Catholic church act as supporting background extras cosigning McCall as a good man pushed to unleash his righteous destruction on the wicked. Try setting aside that the Catholic Church may not be the best character reference. McCall is a stranger in a strange land ready to protect the peaceful, one-dimensional quaint townspeople, who are not even a little disturbed at their new friend being a butcher as long as he is their butcher. Give a man a fish, and he will slaughter your enemies for days.

The mafia would be forgettable if the head, Vincent Quaranta (Andrea Scarduzio), did not have a talent for having no qualms about violating all standard codes of conduct when it comes to being an enforcer and shaking people down. If the target seems off limits because they are too sympathetic or high profile, then Vincent is going to have his men attack them, and it is shocking though predictable once his modus operandi is revealed in his first scene. His little brother, Marco (Andrea Dodero), tries to emulate his brother but only succeeds in being more braggadocious. They are powerful because of their numbers and lack of a moral code. They inflict their onscreen violence on men though there is implicit offscreen sexual assault against a woman. The tension lies in exactly when McCall will jump into action.

The majority of “The Equalizer 3” consists of McCall laying low, recovering from the physical fallout from the opening sequence and getting familiar with Altamonte, the next stop on his journey of vengeance. If there is a wildly unrealistic part of the film, it is the idea that a wounded man would recover so quickly and be able to walk the town’s steep stairs. The townsfolk notice McCall and are initially distant and wary of the stranger. There is some suspense whether McCall is the only black person in town then McCall would have to navigate their reactions of best-case scenario, curiosity, and worst-case scenario, racism. He is not exactly a man who has to be diplomatic. Have no fear. There are two other black people: a potential love interest, café server Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro), and Khalid (Zakaria Hamza), a man who works at the fish shop and has no lines. The townsfolk warm up to McCall quickly.

While enjoying the town’s hospitality, there is an implicit countdown between McCall’s hit point meter increasing and Marco’s activity spreading through the town. Once those two factors converge, it is on. If the film should have been cut short, it should have happened once McCall became well enough to pitch in to repair a firebombed shop but holds back though he wants to demonstrate his skippity paps. McCall makes up for lost time because once Marco and McCall converge, McCall wastes no time on making Marco regret all his life choices.

“The Equalizer 3” has a thread devoted to McCall enlisting the CIA to help him, but that thread is only meaningful if you were a fan of “Man on Fire” (2004) and desperate for a reunion between Washington and Dakota Fanning, who plays CIA agent Emma Collins who has a mysterious connection to McCall revealed at the end of the film. Collins is called smart, but it is much ado about nothing other than she sports a cool demeanor when interrogating a bad guy. When McCall notes her mistakes, I spotted one. How smart can she be? The reveal of Collins’ identity is supposed to be an emotional callback to the prior installments, but it was anticlimactic. That entire story line should have stayed on the cutting room floor.

While “The Equalizer 3” loses some momentum by embracing tropes and changing locations, the brutal action makes up for it, and Washington’s innate magnetism elevates the film. If you do not like violence, walk on by, but if you do, the gorgeous mountainous vistas will keep you occupied while you wait for the next blood bath.