Antoine Fuqua directs Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, Dakota Fanning, Andrea Scarduzio and Remo Girone in this action series where a former CIA killer evens the odds for the little people when they face conspiracy, organised crime or corruption… violently.

As active retirement funds go, The Equalizer franchise seems a solid choice for ageing A-Lister Denzel. There must be a part of him that regrets dying at the end of Man On Fire but Robert McCall is a more personable, down-to-earth variation on Creasy Bear. There was something unfixable about the doomed bodyguard in the superior Tony Scott flick that would never have worked as a dude hiding in plain sight in a DIY warehouse or a late night cafe. McCall has all the supernatural propensity for carnage that makes a vigilante flick like this work but with a slightly more friendly store front.

Three entries in and we still haven’t really seen McCall as gun-for-hire for the 98%. Trouble seems to find him without advertising or message boards. There’s nothing wrong with our anti-hero scaring straight whatever community he lands in… I guess… but it did mean the first two episodes are coincidental subplot heavy. The threequel at least has a geographical focus and one set of bad guys for him to work his way through. This is a marked improvement.

Another joy of the handsome series of very nasty programmers is watching how the finest actor cinema has produced approaches a Liam Neeson flick with all of his tools and talents. This meant the previous instalments had many sidebars where Washington McCall’s preached positive messages and squared off ominously with DTV head villains. The third flick is actually a bit more robust. The human evil is a genuine threat, their comeuppance is truly horrific yet it never feels like the movie jumps the rails from potboiler to bombastic mega set piece closer. If anything 3 often resembles a slasher flick with frequent jump scares and ridiculous deaths. The grace notes inbetween the murders see Denzel goofing a little. Trying out strange elongated facial tics to imbue the silences with implicit atmosphere and reuniting with his Man On Fire co-star Fanning now she is a fully fledged adult. For the most chunky, extreme Equalizer flick yet, episode 3 has an assured daftness and a fresh sweetness that its forebears could only dream of. Maybe this series has some surprising room for growth.

6/7

My wife and I do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/