The Equalizer 3 (#461)


If you’re expecting  to see reviews of the following films:  Strays, Aristotle & Dante, etc.,  My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Blue Beetle, look elsewhere.  Despite at least one very high critical and audience rating, they are no-sees for me for a variety of reasons.  I did see THE EQUALIZER 3, and it was okay, formulaic as it was.  Denzel Washington, as one iteration of a retired secret government agent named Robert McCall who goes around sticking his nose into other people’s business with violence and righteousness, is in Sicily and gets himself beaten up.  I don’t know why he’s in Sicily or why he gets beaten up, but he ends up being cared for by a doctor in a tiny town there.  He learns that the Camorra, a longtime mafia-like criminal organization, is doing bad things in the town and has the residents terrified.  He warns the CIA and then proceeds to do what equalizers do best — beat the heck out of the Camorra, and the CIA cleans up afterwards with an agent to whom he told the story originally leaving her desk job and going out in the field.  He does all this because he likes the people in the village and does it easily without being harmed.  74% of critics and 94% of audiences gave it s thumbs up.  Previews include two remakes — The Color Purple, opening around Christmas, described as a classic and reuniting Oprah, Steven Spielberg and Quincy Jones from the original,  and The Exorcist: Believer, with Ellen Burstyn, 50 years older, from the 1972 original.

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