Schoolboy errors

It’s not complicated to make films of this ilk work but they keep screwing it up.

Equalizer 3 has glaringly little action, and when Denzel does deliver a beatdown it’s too often in shadow or he’s not even there at all (bad guys suddenly get sniped or fall down and we’re supposed to imagine Denzel took them out)

John Wick 4 had the opposite problem - it was 3 hours of non-stop ridiculous action with very little to care about in between. It was exhausting.

Come on guys, there’s a middle ground that filmmakers instinctively understood in the 90’s - have a nice blend of drama and action. Hell the first Equalizer got it broadly right (although it too needed a bit more action)

Denzel’s great as ever, the setting is gorgeous, the acting is good and the villains are appropriately nasty - but there’s no tension. Denzel is almost a supernatural angel of death. He never takes a beating or breaks a sweat.

Denzel’s 70 and he’s a wounded wretch for most of the film, if there was one Equalizer film where he finally meets his match it should have been this one.

Honestly it felt like Fuqua and Denzel wanted a massive paycheck while taking it easy in the Sicilian coast for the summer.