The Equalizer 3

The Altomonte of Antoine Fuqua’s film is really Atrani: production designer Naomi Shohan spent a month scouting Italy before settling on that Amalfi coast village. Shooting began there on 10 October 2022 and ran to 20 November, moved to Naples in early December, then to Rome, and finished in January 2023. The film plays in English and Italian. Fuqua calls violence “dialogue for me” and says it shows where McCall is mentally. In practice most of the 109 minutes go to village life, coffee and neighbours, while the violence arrives in short, very hard bursts. Casting Dakota Fanning is a deliberate callback; she had last acted with Denzel Washington in Man on Fire in 2004, nineteen years earlier. The film was built as a closing chapter: in 2023 Fuqua said they had explored Robert McCall enough and that everything has to come to an end. In late 2024 Washington told Esquire he had said he would do another Equalizer and that they were doing four and five. Watching this as the finale is now a choice rather than a fact. A good fit if you will wait out long stretches of McCall healing and sitting in the same square. Not for anyone who wants action at regular intervals and will read the long village scenes as filler.